


Sol Omnia Regit

by Donna_Immaculata, ElDiablito_SF



Series: The Fabulous Adventures in Immortality of the Vampire Aramis and the Man Who Named the Mountain, Volume I [5]
Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas, d'Artagnan Romances (Three Musketeers Series) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Anal Sex, Blasphemy, Blow Jobs, Chains, M/M, Nudity, Parrot, Pirates, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-09 08:43:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4341809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Donna_Immaculata/pseuds/Donna_Immaculata, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is the 15th century, and Helios' own home has become a bastion of Christianity. A vampire and a pagan demigod defend its virtues and wine cellars against fearsome pirates and the Sultan of Egypt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zoi no miko (zoi_no_miko)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoi_no_miko/gifts).



> Our eternal, weepy gratitude to [Zoi](http://archiveofourown.org/users/zoi_no_miko), purveyor of the octopus. It gave us more joy than you can possibly imagine.

**Rhodes, 1442**

The Colossus of Rhodes, contrary to the popular opinion held by your mortal scholars for many centuries, did not, in fact, straddle the harbor, making every visitor to the island sail merrily between his spread, bronze thighs. The Rhodesians knew to honor Helios better than by having him assume such a preposterous and compromising posture. Of course, by the time Aramis and I had made it to Rhodes, the Colossus and what had remained of him was long gone, swept away by sands of history and human greed. Although, I am compelled to point out, though no doubt you have already surmised this yourself, the tale of the Muslims who had melted the bronze Titan down to sell to a Jew was completely invented by the Christians.

I do, at times, feel bad about the Jews. They took the brunt of the blame when I was present at the Nazarene’s crucifixion. The truth is, the Jews couldn’t care less about Yeshua the Hooligan, who shamed his family by abandoning his father’s honest trade to galavant about with his twelve “apostles” (ha!). But here’s the thing - Barabas was far more attractive, and as you’ve undoubtedly realized by now, I was very given to aesthetic thoughts. Pilate tended to listen to my counsel. I chose Barabas. _Mea culpa_. Do not tell Aramis, this is just _entre nous_.

We had been living on Rhodes for about a year, studying the Hospitallers from afar before we chose the right moment to present ourselves with our newly assembled identities. The Order of the Knights of Saint John, the Knights Hospitaller, or, as they had become known at the time, the Knights of Rhodes, had by this point in time become a well-organized force, due no doubt in part to the wealth accumulated by the Order since the disbandment of the Templars. I never did quite figure out how the Templars fell, but, as my beloved pointed out, to the victor go the spoils, and we tended to enjoy picking the winning side. Joining the Hospitallers gave us the perfect opportunity to combine the two things we loved most: stabbing people with impunity and Jesus Christ. Well, the latter part was really a fetish of Aramis’. As far as I was concerned, if I had wronged Yeshua in any way, then it must have been part of his God’s plan. And if the Adonai of the Jews and I were at crosshairs, it was certainly because He had been more bloodthirsty than even my brother Ares.

It is difficult for me not to get distracted, reminiscing about such things, but the most important aspect of the Hospitallers on Rhodes was that at this time they had become a militarized force to be reckoned with. They were presided over by a Grand Master named Jean de Lastic, representing the _langue d’Auvergne_. As the Order of St. John tempted men from all walks of Europe with piety and glory, the Order had been organized into eight so-called “tongues” based on which geographic region a knight hailed from. Even though Latin appeared to still be the official corresponding tongue of the Order, the other languages of Western Europe were frequently spoken among the brotherhood. And we needed desperately to start acquainting ourselves with their vernacular if we were to impersonate them successfully.

We had chosen the _langue d’Auvergne_ because it seemed easy to pick up, and more importantly, what would later become known as French was undergoing a sort of revolution in the fifteenth century to such an extent that had we spoken it incorrectly, no one would have paid the slightest attention to it, so rapidly was the pronunciation changing at that time. In fact, that had been the reason for the Order to revert to using Latin in their official correspondence.

At the time, it occurred to Aramis to upgrade our monikers to more appropriately Auvergnese sounding ones.

“But I rather liked you being of Snagov,” I mused. “It was quite the romantic gesture you made, naming yourself after the place where I… hm… How would you describe what I had done there?”

“Proposed to me?”

“There you go again, speaking of marriage. It’s as if you _want_ Hera to punish us for violating her house and hearth.”

Aramis was about to say something acerbic, no doubt, but he became distracted with yelling at his new valet. His name had been Bastien and we had picked him up on Rhodes, where the boy had been living in abject squalor, and therefore followed us home like an adoring, stray puppy. Once cleaned up, the kid had turned out to be rather comely, in that almost vapid, doe-eyed way that some young men have before they start to worsen from age and life’s predictable bitterness.

“I was thinking of René d’Herblay,” he turned back towards me, having finished his chastising and picking up the thread of our discussion. “In Hera’s honor.”

“You mean in honor of her sacrificial cakes, don't you?”

“I enjoyed them.” He ran his fingers through my hair as I caught the kid, Bastien, watching us from the doorway and I cleared my throat to alert Aramis to his presence. I wasn’t certain yet of the youth’s trustworthiness but wasn’t ready to let Aramis make a meal of him yet either.

“The baking or the eating?”

Aramis emitted a quiet chuckle and then cast a stare towards the doorway. “Have you finished your chores, boy?” The kid nodded, silently, and Aramis beamed with approbation. Perhaps this one was going to work out after all. My beloved turned his attention back towards me. “And what about you? Athos of Thebes doesn’t quite roll off the _langue_ , does it?”

“I’d settled on Armand de Sillègue,” I replied. “Sillègue is obscure enough for me to have no compatriots and Southern enough to explain my bizarre dialect.”

“ _Armand_ is a very fitting name for you, my sweet adherent of Ares.”

I made a courtly bow and suggested we shut the door. I was not in the mood to have the help wandering in on us unannounced.

By the time we had presented ourselves to the _grand maître_ , our aliases had been so firmly established that Aramis barely even needed to use his hypnotic ability to ingratiate us into the Hospitallers' good graces. Two years prior, the Sultan of Egypt had faced the Knights in a naval battle that sent him back to Egypt to lick his wounds, but the threat still remained, and the Knights of Rhodes could not turn away new arrivals who came as highly recommended as our forged documents led them to believe. In addition to the constant menace of the local pirate contingent which kept the regiments busy, it promised to be quite the diverting stay.

***

I was looking from the citadel’s ramparts out to sea, using my hand to shield my eyes from the blazing rays of Helios as he circumvented his favorite island in his celestial chariot. The telescope had not been invented yet, but I could thank my Father’s eagle vision for my own ocular endowments.

There she was - the pirate frigate that had been molesting our fellow Knights of late, attacking their carracks and making a mockery of their banners, not to mention appropriating the steady supply of wine. This later affront motivated me to deal with the brigands decisively, and perhaps give Aramis opportunity to enjoy a well-earned snack. 

“You are joking,” I said to one of our new companions, who had accompanied us on this exploratory excursion. “ _This_ is the ship that has been causing us so much trouble? This xταπόδι-σχάρας?”

“That’s right. The Htapodi Skharas,” the man next to me nodded emphatically. “A demonic invocation if ever I heard one!” He crossed himself, the poor sod.

“You realize it means ‘Grilled Octopus’, yes?”

Aramis laughed and our new friend’s eyes became in danger of drowning in a sea of whiteness from the width to which they opened. I presumed he had not, in fact, known what xταπόδι-σχάρας meant. It appeared they stuck to their _langues_ pretty closely here, and did not bother learning the regional dialects, no doubt deeming the native Rhodesians beneath them. 

“What kind of a madman would call his pirate ship ‘Grilled Octopus’?” Aramis asked, still laughing so hard that his entire body was shaking.

“A hungry one?” I shrugged.

“Well, that explains the tentacled monster on his figurehead!” our bewildered companion exclaimed.

I looked out to sea again. “Ah yes, it is rather tentacled, isn’t it?”

“These pirates must have a sense of humor,” Aramis suggested. 

“And a greater sense of tragedy - for they keep stealing my… _our_ wine,” I muttered, casting a vindictive stare at the Grilled Octopus swaying on its anchor within a cannonball’s reach, as if taunting us to fire across its bow. “Who is the captain of this monstrosity?” I asked.

“He’s a giant, a beast!” 

At this, Aramis and I exchanged looks. I was already formulating a plan in my mind which involved us swimming under cover of night up to the anchored frigate, scaling her, and slaughtering everyone on board, including this alleged ‘beast.’

“He’s as ruthless as he is ravenous, and his soul is as black as his skin!”

“I hear he eats Christian babies for breakfast!” Another member of the Order joined our conversation as he passed by.

“Oh I doubt _that_ ,” Aramis stated, and quickly added, “Where would he be getting a steady supply of Christian babies?” His eyes fixed on mine and I could practically hear him thinking _No, really, tell me where._

“So, he’s African?” I tried to elucidate. 

“He’s of the devil himself!” our new arrival spoke. “I have seen him kill a man simply by knocking him over the head with his enormous fist. And that while the man was wearing a helmet!”

“But he called his ship the Grilled Octopus,” I pointed out, much to Aramis’ renewed amusement. “Surely. What an ogre.”

“Do not tempt Satan, Monsieur de Sillègue! Porthos is not to be trifled with!”

Well, this _Porthos_ was going to be getting an unpleasant surprise, I thought. That octopus-fancying wine thief was surely no match for the son of Zeus. I looked over at Aramis and he surreptitiously flashed me his fangs. It appeared that we were going hunting.

***

“Well, well, well, it _had_ to be a cage, didn’t it?”

The shadows shrunk around me as I slinked into the patch of light that poured through the bullseye into the brig. Inside the cage, Athos stirred, like a magnificent beast trapped by seafaring naturalists. I could almost hear the lion’s roar unfold within his breast as he pulled himself up in the chains by which he was strung up like a hog. His shirt hung in tatters around him, and for the briefest of moments the notion flashed through my mind that he might have riven it in a gesture of proud defiance, demonstrating to his captors that he carried no concealed weapons about his person. (A nebulous memory stirred: the memory of the bronze skin of a semi-nude youth who descended to us with a message from his father. Ever since I’d met Athos’ family, I understood my godling’s proclivity for baring himself during negotiations; it ran in his blood.)

A strangled laugh greeted me from within the depth of the enclosure, and Athos swung into view, piercing me with that insolent heathen stare from beneath lowered brows. “Aramis.” His voice was a gravelly croak. “Did you bring wine?”

I rolled my eyes and put my hands on my hips. Predictably, Athos’ gaze fixed at my groin, and I barely caught my smirk before it escaped me to undermine my authority.

“Is that all you can think of, you stupid false idol?” I admonished him. “Booze? That’s the root of all your troubles, you know.” Indicating the cage with a gesture. “It’s the reason why you’re here.”

“I’m here because I was chasing pirates, my sarcastic friend.” He coughed, and I could sense feverish heat radiate off him. He probably hadn’t drunk a drop of water since he’d gone on board.

I strode towards him, and his eyes snapped to my face, before trailing back to my groin as if compelled. “And why were you chasing pirates, Athos?” I breathed, leaning against the bars with my chest, “was it not because they kept stealing wine from under your nose?”

“Not at all. It was to procure tasty snacks for chyortik.” He inclined his head in a bow that was almost courtly, had it not been impeded by the chains stretching his arms above him almost to breaking point. “In fact,” he continued, carried away on a wave of his own eloquence, “I believe it is you, my diabolic lover, who is the root of all my troubles.”

“Don’t blame me for your weakness.” I pushed my arm between the bars, grabbed a fistful of his hair and held his head in place.

“You are my weakness,” he whispered through parched lips.

My heart jolted, as it always did when his fever-bright eyes burned into mine. My heart was not the only thing to jolt, for Athos’ lips curled into a smirk and his gaze dropped to where the compass needle of my loins was pointing due north. “Aramis. You’re naked,” he said.

I shrugged. “Have you ever tried to swim fully clothed?”

His eyes, his smile softened. “You swam here.” His voice was like a prayer.

“What did you expect?”

He had been surprised when he’d found out I knew how to swim, when we’d first come to Greece. “What species of feline are you, kitten?” he had said through laughter, watching me clamber out of the surf. “Surely, you must detest water.”

“Leopards swim,” I had said, for I had heard crusaders returning from the Holy Land talk about large cats that chased their prey all the way into rivers. “And it is precisely because I detest it that I don’t wish it to become my grave.”

“Alone?” Athos was asking from the confines of his cage.

I gave a bow with my hand pressed to my heart. “At your service. I’m afraid our fellow knights are still licking the wounds they suffered during the skirmish.”

“You are not wounded.”

“No.” I thrust my arm through the bars again and touched his damp skin. “Are you?”

Athos shook his head. “Merely fatigued,” he admitted.

“Good.” I tore my gaze off him and looked the iron bars up and down. The cage was solid; it must have been built for transporting – how aptly! – wild beasts, which the pirates sold to menageries in Europe. The shackles around Athos’ wrists were heavy and had chafed his skin raw; I could smell his blood over the odours of bilge water, tar and salt. “I need to find a way to free you.”

Athos jingled his chains like a boisterous ghost. “You don’t have the key?”

“Why would I have the key?”

He shrugged, as much as his chains permitted. “You brought a sword. It’s not much of a stretch to expect you brought a key also.”

“I _always_ bring a sword.”

A smile flittered across his tired face. “True. You should have brought Grigoriy. He knows what to do in cases such as these.”

“You mean this is not the first time pirates locked you up in a cage?” I leaned my sword against the wall, pushed both arms through the bars, took his face between my hands and pulled him close to kiss him. “I must say the look suits you.”

“I thought you could get in everywhere you wanted,” he said, rather breathlessly, when I let go of him. “Why can’t you get in here?”

“I need someone to let me in. I can’t exactly bedevil iron, can I?” I gripped two bars and rattled them vigorously, to no effect whatsoever.

“Why didn’t you bring someone? Someone with a key?”

“Yes, thank you for your good advice.” I stalked around the cage, and then around the brig, scanning the walls for chains in the hope I’d find a key that would fit the locks of Athos’ shackles. “I didn’t even know if you were still alive. Well-” I glanced at him over my shoulder and saw that he’d been staring at my arse. “If they had made attempts to kill you.”

“How did you find me?”

“I always find you. Do you not know that?”

In actual and embarrassing fact, I had not found him straightaway. I had first followed a false trail, one that had led me straight to the captain’s cabin, and I had to smile my way past two or three guards on my way thither before I realised that something was not right. And let me tell you, the nudity didn’t help.

He smiled and his eyes lit up like stars. “Aramis,” he whispered. “Come here.”

I was back by the cage in the blink of an eye. His body was taut like a bowstring as he let himself fall against the iron bars, towards me, and I grabbed his shirt and pulled him closer, as close as his restrains permitted. Athos growled, a low, dangerous sound that rose from the depth of his throat and vibrated against my lips. I shoved my hand under the torn and abused linen and dug my nails into his flesh to make him hiss and arch into my grip. His mouth was very dry and his lips were swollen painfully, their skin paper-thin. But his moans were hot, and I drank them in like blood.

“Do you know where we are?” he muttered and slid the tip of his tongue across my upper lip.

“In the brig.”

“The ship, Aramis. Do you know which shi-”

I bit down on his lip and tasted blood. He hissed. “Forgive me, my love,” I pulled him in for another, much gentler, kiss, my heart full of contrition. “I didn’t mean to-”

“The Grilled Octopus,” he whispered, and my knees buckled.

He had done that before: the night after we had learned the name of the pirate ship. I had been spread atop him, sucking at the neck which he had so generously gifted to me, gulping down the nectar that sprung from his veins. Suddenly, he had turned his head and his breath scorched my skin. I’d shuddered, expecting him to pour one of his rare confessions into my ear that made my body thrum with lust and love. Then: “Grilled Octopus,” Athos had breathed, and I’d sucked in a lungful of blood; it siphoned to my nose and rendered me a choking, laughing, coughing heap. That dirty manoeuvre had called for chastisement, and so I’d forced his legs apart with my knees, shoved my well-oiled hand between them, and then my cock, and I impaled him with one long thrust, drawing a filthy groan out of him.

Unfortunately, I could not avail myself of the same method now, with iron bars separating my body from his. “Stop laughing,” he was reprimanding me, laughing himself. “This is not the time.”

“No, you’re right, it isn’t.” I pulled myself together and yanked him closer. There was something strangely appealing about manhandling his dangling, helpless body like that. I pushed my hand between his legs, none too gently, and palmed him through the fabric of his breeches. With my other hand, I cupped myself, pointing my prick at his groin. “Do you regret that you got yourself captured?” I asked, stroking myself slowly, thrusting my cock through the bars to brush against his leg. “I wager you are. I’m ready to bet one of my souls that you’d prefer to be out here with me.”

“You shameless hussy,” he hissed, watching the slick up-and-down of my hand along my length with burning eyes. “If my hands were free-”

“If your hands were free, you’d be using them to hold tight to these bars as I fucked you raw,” I snarled at him, the familiar concoction of anger and lust churning in my stomach and loins.

Athos groaned, his mouth slack with frustration as he attempted to rub himself into my hand.

“That’ll teach you,” I continued in a low voice. “This is what happens when you get yourself captured.”

“Aramis!” he gritted out at last, his body wound so tightly I fancied I could hear his joints creak and his muscles twang.

I took pity on the wretched godling, whose undignified position caused him suffering enough even without the pangs of unfulfilled desire. To alleviate some of the agony, I sank down to my knees and freed him from beneath the folds of linen. His cock burned in my hand and then in my mouth, and I scraped my teeth tenderly over the taut skin. Athos swore and bucked into me, and the velvety tip slid over my tongue. As the familiar taste of the ocean spread in my mouth, I closed my eyes in delight. Beneath my knees, the floor rose and fell. In my ears, the sea roared. Athos was panting, ready to spill himself at the merest change of pressure.

That was why, I reckon, neither of us had heard him. Suddenly, the door burst open, and I barely had time to roll away and grab my sword. My body had pulled itself in position before my mind had caught on. Luckily for us, the attacker had come from light into dark, and it took him a moment or two to gain his night vision and gather his wits.

I glanced at Athos, who swung from his chains with his legs apart. His shirt flattered around his frame like a sail around a broken mast; it fell down almost to his knees, effectively concealing the fact that his breeches were undone and his cock ready to burst. As to me, my modesty was forfeit. The moment the giant’s gaze fell upon me, he laughed a booming laugh, and charged. Like an avalanche rolling towards me; like a landmass shifting and crashing down on me. I sensed his strength even without feeling any blows: it made the air around him sizzle with energy. A huge fist hurtled past my face and split open the wooden wall.

He was strong, but I was fast. My speed had always served me well, and I was using it to my advantage, swirling around the gigantic pirate king like a Persian dervish and keeping out of reach of those lethal pistons that were attached to him by his shoulders. My best chance was to render him dizzy with the speed of the chase, and then land the killing stroke.

I succeeded. Almost. He had lunged, I dodged and struck, and my blade caught in the fleshy part of his arm, rather than piercing his chest. An almighty blow threw me across the brig and I crashed into the cage. Athos cried out my name, I fancied, but I barely heard it. There was no pain: all that filled my head and senses was that scent, that scent which had called out to me all those years ago on the battlefield and which sent a jolt through my entire body.

“Athos!” I cried out. Athos was talking, saying words to reassure me as the African pirate advanced at me like leviathan stalking its prey, laughing in primal pleasure. “Athos. He’s one of you!”

The air froze around us. The colossus paused, frowned, and his gaze shifted from me to Athos and back again. I seized my chance and glided to my feet, baring my teeth at him, willing him to stop in his murderous intent and listen.

“He’s your brother, Athos,” I said, much more calmly, now that the titanic menace was no longer advancing.

I heard Athos’ voice behind me. “What?”

“What?” the wine thief echoed.

I wiped sweat off my upper lip and sucked in the air that carried the potent scent of the baby-eating ogre’s blood. “He’s your brother,” I said, pointing my sword at the Goliath who loomed across the room, staring at me with huge black eyes. “Or uncle. I don’t know, he may be both. It’s difficult to say with your family. Definitely a blood relative.”

“Ah!” Athos said softly as understanding dawned. He turned his head towards the huge pirate and tilted his head. “May I ask, Captain, if you were perhaps sired by the All-father Zeus?”

The giant burst out laughing. “Zeus, as if!” he exclaimed. “No, my provenience is nothing as noble.” He bowed with perfect flourish and politeness. “Porthos, son of Helios, at your service. My father,” he added with a note of pride, “was the Colossus of Rhodes.”

“That explains it,” Athos said, looking the laughing Titan up and down.

“You gentlemen are the fruits of that Olympian philanderer’s busy loins?” He was grinning so broadly his smile lit up the corner of the brig where he stood.

“He is,” I pointed at Athos. “I’m not.”

Porthos looked at me. “Who fathered you, then, sir knight? Apollo? Ares?”

“None of them. I’m not family.”

“Oh.” He chewed his lip. “Considering your battle attire,” he looked me up and down, “I would’ve thought you must be.”

Athos started to laugh.

***

And this is how we meet - The Three Inseparables. If someone had told me that one day we would come to be known by that moniker, I would have split their skull as I had tried to do to Aramis when I had first caught him naked in my brig.

Well, there they were, the two of them: one chained up and laughing a laugh so charming as if he were dining with the very Queen of Egypt instead of tied up in one of my cages; the other naked as the day he must have been born and reeking of seafoam and, well, the other one. I was not at my full power at night, for my Solar progenitor had been sleeping, but my senses were still sharp enough to tell. Something was not right with them. The word ‘odd’ came to mind. So did the word ‘insane’.

In truth, I was rather confused by what I was supposed to do with them. On the one hand, they had fought against me and should certainly have been cut into pieces and fed to the fishes. On the other hand, the bitey one had indicated the chained up one was some kind of relation. A son of Zeus, no less. And he had found me amusing. I confess to having been flattered.

I scratched my head, contemplating them.

“I am Aramis, and this is Athos,” the naked one finally broke my contemplation.

“Charmed, I’m sure,” I muttered, still uncertain about whether to kill them, chain them both up, or let them go. Something told me that putting them into the same cage would be a mistake, call it a hunch.

“You should unchain him,” the nudist continued.

“Why on Earth would I do that? I only have your word for us being relations. And besides, genealogy isn’t my forte. Your alleged father fought against the Titans, didn’t he!” Yes, definitely leaning towards killing.

“Hyperion, your grandfather,” the chained one, Athos, spoke, “was the brother of Cronus, my own grandfather. And if you were to consult all available sources on Titanomachy, Hyperion and Helios had sat out the war between the Titans and the Olympians.”

“Hm,” I tried to not be too impressed that he actually kept track of this familial drivel. “Perhaps… Athos. Isn’t that the name of a mountain?” 

“It is.”

“It’s his.”

“Hm,” I repeated. I had sailed past that den of Christian iniquity for centuries and it never occurred to me it might have _belonged_ to a family member. “What does that make us, then? If my grandfather and your grandfather… what not?”

“Second cousins,” the nudist interjected. He was quick on the uptake, the cousin-expert. I could’ve used a man like him on my crew. Cousin dearest, I still wasn’t so sure about. The longer I looked at him, the more apparent it became that he wasn’t wearing any breeches. At least not in a manner that breeches were intended to be worn.

“How do I know if I unchain you, you won’t try to do harm to me or to my ship?”

“The Grilled Octopus?”

“God _damn_ it, Athos!” The naked one collapsed on the floor, clutching at his sides, as peals of laughter rolled out of him.

“What is wrong with him?” I asked my newly found relation.

“He, uh… has a weakness for sealife.” He met my eyes and even in the darkness of the brig I could feel a kind of quiet power radiating off him. Son of Zeus, I’ll be damned!

“So do I,” I responded. “A weakness for eating it!” Here I began laughing myself, and shortly all three of us were bellowing with laughter, although I suspect each one of us may have been laughing about his own thing.

“Listen, Captain Porthos,” Athos spoke. “I have to thank you again for your hospitality, but don’t you think we three would be much more comfortable discussing our culinary preferences and family histories back in your cabin, perhaps? And over wine?”

My two uninvited guests exchanged unreadable looks. It was like watching an entire conversation pass between two people without either of them saying a word. I wondered if they had those kinds of powers.

Still, I had to admire my demi-divine brother’s balls. Perhaps that was why he had not worn any pantaloons - because his nether-orbs were too large to be contained by mere articles of clothing.

“I ask again, how do I know I can trust you?” I said.

“I give you my word,” Athos replied. And, the damnedest thing: I believed him.

I set Athos free first, while his disrobed companion scowled surreptitiously at me from nearby. Athos thanked me with the same courtesy that he had showed me earlier and then proceeded to pull up his breeches, which I had finally located midway down his thigh.

“Did my crew do this to you?” I couldn’t help but ask. Perhaps that wasn’t the polite thing to do, to notice that, but I either kill my prisoners or ransom them, I don’t humiliate them like some barbarian! I do, after all, have the Sun in my blood. I like to walk in the light, with my head held high. Even if I did, at the time, resort to piracy to fatten up my coffers. Stealing from the Crusaders gave me great joy.

“Not at all,” he responded, allaying my fears, yet not elaborating. I shrugged. Perhaps he had lost weight during his captivity and they had fallen down of their own accord. The other one was still scowling at me.

“You need clothes,” I stated. “Family or not, I’m not in the mood for whatever this is,” I pointed at him from head to foot. At this point, Athos cast me a glare that made me question his word. Which, for all I knew, was worth a whole lot of nothing. Gods lie too, don’t they? “Stay here,” I ordered the two of them.

When I returned, my night visitors were both a bit breathless but otherwise unmoved. Perhaps the cold sea air was getting to them. I handed each of them a cloak and invited them to follow me to my quarters.

We spoke at length about ships and seafaring, for Athos appeared to have a deep knowledge of such things. I suppose being around for as long as he’d been alive, it was only natural, yet I couldn’t help but enjoy the company of someone who was as appreciative of a fine frigate like my Octopus as I was myself. He did, however, manage to drink the lion’s share of the wine that we pilfered from the Hospitallers during our last tussle. Aramis occasionally would take the cup right out of his companion’s hand and bring it to his own lips. He seemed to say as little as he drank, though I understood he preferred a more potent vintage that came not from the vine but from the vein. Once I had disabused him of the notion that I had a supply of Christian babies for my morning repast, I dare say, he seemed almost disappointed.

“Why piracy?” Athos finally asked. “With your parentage, I should think…”

“Why Crusading?” I retorted.

“We go where the call of war takes us,” Athos shrugged.

“It appears we all share a certain taste for blood,” I looked over at Aramis. “Some more so than others.”

Athos had downed his wine and graced his companion with a woeful look. “I used to think my blood was unique, but it appears that there is more in the world to sway one’s nostrils.” 

I was about to ask him to clarify what in Hell’s bells he meant, when Aramis responded, “Fortunately, I have other uses for you as well, that you’re uniquely qualified to fulfill.”

They were talking in riddles and looking at each other in a way that could only have been explained by the sheer amount of wine only one of them drank. Their hands touched briefly and Aramis bit his lips while Athos blanched and looked as if he was about to start reciting poetry. That’s when I finally got it.

“Oh, gentlemen! You’re lovers!”

“Jesus!” Aramis exclaimed.

“Porthos!” Athos echoed and then veering towards his companion, “Jesus? Really? You’re invoking _him_ at a time like this?”

“Well, aren’t you? Doing the time-honored man-love thing?”

“Sweet Mother of God,” Aramis muttered. It was as if no one had actually called it by its name to their faces before, so delicate were this demon’s ears. The very tips of his lobes appeared to blush like a virgin.

“Yes, I suppose we are,” Athos, ostensibly the less fragile of the two, finally spoke.

“Do you prefer to call it something else? Immortal marrieds, perhaps?”

“Quiet, Porthos! Hera will hear you,” Athos looked around my cabin as if the Goddess of Family was about to materialize on my ship and bless this reunion.

I laughed. “We’re at sea, my friend. This is Poseidon’s territory and you say Poseidon has always been good to you.”

“So we are, my friend, so we are.” Athos’ hand brushed against my own and I felt an easy moment of camaraderie pass between us.

But suddenly a lot of things were making sense. “He came to rescue you!” I slapped the table. “By Hades, that’s… adorable!”

Aramis hissed and Athos ran his hand up his back, as if to soothe the wildcat inside.

“He doesn’t like being called adorable.”

I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them, but they were far too entertaining to simply catch and release. I was loath to admit, I enjoyed their company immensely. 

I took another gulp from my own cup and propped up my head, leaning forward towards them. “Love is a beautiful thing, you two turtle doves. It isn’t something to hide in the shadows. It should walk proudly in the Sun.”

“Said the great Ogre of the Mediterranean?” Aramis mused.

Oh, but they were too precious to waste. And besides, neither one of them would likely die if I forced them to walk the plank.

“Now kiss,” I suggested.


	2. Chapter 2

**Rhodes, 1443**

A year had passed since Aramis clambered naked on board the Grilled Octopus to rescue me from my predicament, or what in the present day he refers to as my “confinement kink”, and we encountered Porthos the Scourge of the Seas. How a man, or rather a Titan, with a heart as big as the Sun itself, a creature so guileless and hospitable, ever came to be known as a baby-eating ogre was completely incomprehensible to us, who saw beyond his exterior to the honeyed cream middle. We had decided to keep him.

Or, rather, I had decided that he should keep me. I was his prisoner, after all, and had given him my word to do neither him nor his precious Octopus any harm. It was obvious he didn’t want to kill us, but there had to be a way for him to save face with his crew, and he couldn’t very well let me loose to rejoin the Hospitallers without putting on some kind of show. After some joint consideration, we had dispatched Aramis back before the break of dawn, like a beautiful sea eel, naked but with the sword in his teeth, to convince the Hospitallers to negotiate my ransom.

“You have _no_ idea how hard I’m fucking you when we get you back,” my lover purred in my ear as he pressed me against the boards of the deck, before he tossed his borrowed cloak back to Porthos. “Thank you for lending me that, Captain.”

“Thank you for letting me watch,” Porthos nodded.

It turned out Porthos would become almost as invested in our relationship as I was myself. Porthos, whose own wenching was rivaled possibly only by the Olympian Gods themselves, melted into a puddle at the sight of our tender concern for each other every time. If he hadn’t loved vagina as much as I feared it, I would have been alarmed. But as it was, knowing Porthos was akin to having a Faerie Godmother, who was actually a fearsome pirate.

As it turned out, Armand de Sillègue was valuable enough to the Knights of Rhodes that they had opened parlay with the Grilled Octopus. Although, I still suspect Aramis probably bedeviled a few key players on my behalf, just to make them extra cooperative.

In the meantime, Porthos and I were getting to know each other fairly well. First, I demanded a rematch for that caging incident, and showed him what a son of Zeus could do in hand to hand combat when he wasn’t being attacked from the back by a treacherous boom. Then, not to start another Titanomachy, I let him beat me roundly in arm wrestling. Or, very well, perhaps he beat me fairly, but only because he is literally a Titan. I’ve had more opportunity to practice since then, and we are more evenly matched now.

At last, we received word that the Hospitallers were inviting us to shore to conduct negotiations pertaining to my ransom. It was a very civilized affair, all told, with a resplendent feast set before the parties in the Grand Master’s quarters.

“Whatever they offer you, don’t accept the first offer. No matter how lucrative it seems,” I suggested to my new friend.

“Trying to fleece me? I shall skewer them like so many pieces of roasted lamb.”

“No skewering. You’ll ruin my burgeoning career as a warrior-monk.”

“Oh, I know what you’re worth better than they do,” Porthos winked at me. “They don’t even know you’re a son of a god.”

The Grand Master spared no expense: the table was replete with so much game that I wondered whether we had mounted a military offensive upon mainland in order to procure it. There was pheasant confit, truffled veal, multitudes of honey-roasted piglets, stuffed partridges in flocks, and so much sea life as to make Poseidon himself envious. Porthos had declared the setting to be “adequate” and then proceeded to inhale so much food that I was beginning to understand the provenance of the baby-eating rumors. As impressed as I was, I couldn’t keep up with him.

The discussion had turned at last to the ransom, which was a sizeable offer, even for a worthy prize such as myself. Porthos looked at me, his eyes wide with wonder, wanting me to confirm that he should, in fact, decline the exorbitant sum of gold. I looked over at Aramis, who only smiled at me over his partridge.

“He’s worth more than that. _Alive_ ,” my fearsome pirate roared and then broke out into a loud guffaw that sent visible shivers up the Hospitallers’ devout backs.

There were tense whispers on the other side of the table. In truth, I did not know if they could muster up more money, or at least not immediately.

“Monsieur Porthos, perhaps you do not understand how much one could do with the sum we’re offering you. For just one man,” the Grand Master spoke carefully, avoiding my eyes.

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” Porthos twirled his mustache angrily. “I’ll have you know that my mother was the Queen of Nubia, and I’m very well versed in gold!”

I raised an eyebrow at that. I remember Porthos telling me a different story about his mother. I believe he’d claimed she was an Ethiopian Princess that other time. At this point, I was starting to suspect that perhaps Porthos was reconsidering ransoming me at all. He seemed militantly set and I rued my own suggestion of turning down the first offer. So I did the only thing I could.

I said, “My dear d’Herblay, try the grilled octopus, it’s delicious.”

This caused quite the commotion as Aramis choked and Porthos laughed so loudly that the Hospitallers almost scattered to the four winds. When Aramis had recovered his senses, he spoke before anyone else could.

“We will pay the ransom, M. Porthos, and you will also have our word that we will give your ship free passage through these waters without engaging you in the future.”

“Oh?” Porthos looked over for my barely perceptible nod. It seemed like a fair deal, and I fancied myself somewhat of an expert on fairness (the Jesus incident notwithstanding). “I suppose you expect me not to attack your carracks in return?” the giant asked.

I don’t actually think anyone _was_ expecting that, but the opportunity was too good to pass up.

“Are you offering the Knights a truce, Captain?” Aramis asked.

I gave another small nod. Porthos twirled his mustache.

“A truce,” Porthos said, extending his enormous hand towards the Grand Master.

The truce was signed that same night, the ransom paid, and I was left behind on Rhodes and apparently the hero of the hour. But not before Porthos delivered a special parting gift to me: a magnificent, grey African parrot from his own menagerie.

“These creatures are awfully clever,” the Titan said, petting the bird’s head with one giant finger as it jumped from his fist onto mine. “If you teach him what to say, you can use him to send messages to me.”

“Or I can send Aramis again.” We both laughed at the memory of my little sea anemone all glorious during nude combat.

I named the parrot Raoul.

Over the past year, we had the opportunity to perfect our Auvergnais and other French dialects. Sometimes I practiced with Raoul. He was particularly good at picking up on the obscenities, true pirate bird that he was at heart. Aramis was particularly concerned that one day Raoul might repeat something he really shouldn’t in front of the other Knights, so we kept him caged most of the time. Certainly Bastien shuddered each time he walked by and Raoul would shout, “Don’t eat the servant!”

One day, I recall, Aramis stormed in on me, lightning flashing from his eyes, during one of the hours when he was normally partaking in his more studious activities.

“Why did chyortik tear his beautiful nose away from his books?” I asked.

“Did you teach the parrot to say ‘Ave Jesus’?”

My poor mute Grigoriy gesticulated to me that if he could laugh properly, he would actually die from laughter. And then he also gestured that I was a horse’s ass for enraging the chyortik like that, for which I smacked him across his insolent hands since it wasn’t his mouth that spoke.

“Aramis, I love you,” I said, “I would never purposefully teach the parrot to take your Lord’s name in vain.” Just because I may have sarcastically made that very utterance in front of Raoul did not mean I had done so willfully. “Come now,” I extended my arms to him, “I do not wish to fight about your other passions.”

He allowed me to pull him into my embrace. “Very well, but only because Porthos will be coming to port tonight and I promised him to be of good cheer the next time we go carousing.”

“He would be very upset to see you cross with me,” I agreed. “Plus, I can think of a few ways that I can put you to better cheer.”

“Reprobate,” he muttered into my neck.

***

“You _will_ have to keep quiet.”

“Are you talking to me or to Raoul?”

I lowered myself over him and snaked my hands around his torso. With both palms flattened against his breast, I pulled him up against my chest, until I felt his heartbeat fuse with mine.

“Raoul doesn’t heed me,” I said and bit into his ear. “But I have not quite relinquished the hope yet that you might be smarter than a bird. It would,” I continued pensively, rubbing his nipples with my fingertips to make him squirm, “It would, I believe, reflect very badly on me had I chosen a lover with the mental capacity of a sea slug.”

Beneath me, Athos shuddered from head to foot with suppressed laughter.

“Keep still,” I whispered into his hair and watched the skin in the nape of his neck tauten under my ghosting breath. “Or I will have to tie you to the bed.”

“You _have_ tied me to the bed.”

“Only your arms.” I trailed my hands over the flat ridges of his ribs, the flexing bulges of his shoulders, and the lengths of his arms. The position suited him: both arms stretched above his head, his muscles tight like ship ropes, his nails dug into the mattress as if he was trying to claw his way out of his temporary confinement. “I’ve half a mind to tie the rest of you, too.” I licked his ear and relished the shiver that ran down his spine. “Do not make me reconsider my leniency.”

“You’ve been consorting with pirates a bit too enthusiastically, my power-mad diablik.” His voice was muffled by the pillow, but I heard the laughter trapped therein. “You’ve picked up some very bad habits from Πόρθωϛ ‘Hλίου.”

“I sincerely hope our Goliath of the sea doesn’t make a habit of chaining you up.” I slipped the tip of my finger under the manacle that lay around his wrist, checking if the padding with which I’d protected his wrists was still in place. “It would be with a very heavy heart that I’d eat him.”

“He wouldn’t let you.”

I laughed and nipped at the taut muscle that strained so enticingly between the column of his neck and his shoulder.

“Yeah, he would.”

“You think you can eat everyone,” he said, and this time I heard breathlessness creep into his voice as arousal rendered it thicker and throatier.

“Mmh,” I conceded, nibbling at the flesh presented to me so invitingly, dipping my mouth into the valley between his shoulderblades that jutted out like a young bird’s fledgling wings. “But, eternally perplexing as it is, you are the only one whom I wish to eat on a regular basis.”

He groaned into the pillow, his control finally slipping, and I swiped my tongue up his spine, sampling the texture of his skin and the salt of his sweat as I would the finest Hungarian wine. His flavour shot to my head, even though I wasn’t drinking from him. The unique blend of human and divine made for an intoxicating bouquet, and even after all those years my thirst was by no means quenched. Wine was his weakness; as for me, it was the nectar of his veins that I craved.

Beneath his skin, with its look of marble and its feel of the finest velvet, his muscles had begun to quiver like those of a charger straining to gallop into battle. He tugged at his bonds despite himself as I slithered down his body, licking him like the kitten he so often accused me of being. I dragged my nails down his flanks, snagging in the grooves between his ribs, and then my hands clenched around his hips. “Up!”

Athos groaned again and attempted to resist my command, but I pressed my mouth to his gluteus maximus and bit into the firm flesh. His body jerked out of his control, but he stopped himself from falling.

“I _will_ bite you.”

“Yes.” An anguished sob into the pillow.

I bit him again, harder. Not hard enough to draw blood. This was an area where I was interested in the taste of his skin more than in what lay beneath. I accordingly devoted myself to licking and biting the swell of his arse until he whimpered and melted into the mattress. My tongue followed the trail of sweat that gathered in the hollows at the base of his spine. Along the cleft of his arse, then further down, to the spot where his thighs were pressed together, where his skin was slickest and hottest. My breath was hot, too, as I exhaled against his skin, raising the fine hairs there. Beneath, between, his blood pulsed in those powerful veins that I had so often drunk from.

“Do you _want_ fangs to come out to play?” I grazed the back of his thighs with my tame teeth, and his legs fell open at last. The scent of his arousal shot up in a heady cloud that made my head spin. I had been aware that he was hard, but now I could taste it. I felt my throat vibrate, sucking in his fragrance through my open mouth as he lay panting before me.

“Aramis…” a half-sigh, half curse, and I rubbed my cheek against his thigh and lapped at the spot behind his testicles. Then – an exclamation, like a cry for mercy.

“Grilled octopus!” A vulgar screech that cleaved my brain like the blade of the sword that had once killed me.

I jumped and almost fell off the bed. “Ścierwo parszywe!” I swore in Polish, a language that lends itself like hardly any other to expressing disapproval. “I swear I’m going to murder that bird!”

Spread before me, his arms pulled up and apart by formidable chains, Athos was laughing. His shoulders shook and he appeared to be biting into the pillow to stifle the sound.

“And then I’ll cook it and serve it to Porthos for breakfast,” I added, manfully suppressing the spasms of laughter that threatened to burst forth.

“Please don’t kill Raoul,” he pleaded, squirming beneath me to distract me from my murderous designs. His thighs parted, and his plan worked.

I dived back in and dragged my tongue behind, between, below. His body heaved under my mouth and hands, his legs opened for me, and he gasped when my mouth alighted on his hot flesh. When I licked him there, teasing him open with the tip of my tongue, listening to the hoarse, filthy moans that erupted between his lips, I didn’t have to drink his blood. This was heady enough, the delirious depravity of the act. An act that had cost the Knights Templar dearly. As I continued to lick Athos wet and pliant, I thought of the charges of heresy that had led to their dissolution more than one hundred years ago. “… _in ore, in umbilico, seu ventre nudo, et in ano, seu spina dorsi_ …” I muttered, reciting the litany of kisses the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ had bestowed on each other and for which they had been burned at the stake.

“Ave Jesus!”

“Jesus!” I echoed, pulling away abruptly from between Athos’ legs. “ _Athos_ …”

“I didn’t teach him that, I swear,” he panted, raising his sweat-soaked brow off the pillow. “Aramis. Please don’t stop.” His hips undulated as he attempted to fuck himself into the mattress.

I shoved my hand underneath him roughly and grabbed his cock. Where he had been rubbing against the bedsheets, they were drenched. “I don’t believe you,” I said, holding his cock in a tight grip. “Apologise for blaspheming against my God, accursed Baphomet.”

Athos snorted with a desperate laugh. “ _Moi, Raymond de La Fère, 21 ans, reconnais que j'ai craché trois fois sur la Croix, mais de bouche et pas de cœur,_ ” he choked out, quoting one of the confessions extorted from the Templars at their trial that had fallen into my hands during my studies. I don’t know how the documents had ended up in the Hospitallers’ archives, but Athos and I had found them very convenient for studying the _langue_ spoken in Paris.

“Spit at the Cross, did you?” I crouched low over him. “Three times?” I watched my own spit trickle into his cleft and thrust in my finger in its wake. He was wet and open enough to admit one of my digits even without the aid of oil. “That is a grave sin, my son. One that calls for immediate castigation.”

“Don’t,” he gritted out, “don’t call me that.”

“What, ‘my son’? Isn’t this,” I twisted my finger inside him, “Something your father would do? Look at you, on your knees like the sinner that you are. You need to be guided onto the right path.” I pulled out my finger, and he groaned.

Athos’ back flexed in a desperate attempt to raise himself from his vulnerable position, but all that he accomplished was jangling his chains. “Get on with it!” he snarled.

“I am your shepherd,” I recited, reaching for the vial of oil. “I tell you that even so there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.”

“And you have the gall to complain about Raoul!” Athos growled, pushing his arse in the air. I leaned in, pressed a kiss to his skin, and my oil-slick thumb slipped in easily. My cock twitched in joyful anticipation as I stretched him with oil and tender caresses.

“I have thought of the right penance for you,” I informed him eventually and pulled my hand back.

His back shuddered. “What is it?” he whispered like one resigned to his fate.

For a moment, I was speechless, because my cock was slipping through the tight ring and the sight, the feel of him, of _Athos_ taking all of me in robbed me of my faculties. At last, I had filled him, and we both stilled; panting, lightheaded, and hopelessly lost in one another. I hesitated; from the crest of the frothing sea of emotions within my breast, love rose like Aphrodite, the Foam-Born. All I wanted was to envelop him with my body to keep him safe, keep him forever, and to fuck him in an animal frenzy of lust.

“Hera’s cunt!”

Athos flew off the mattress and I almost slipped out, had I not been holding fast to his hips. “Did you teach him that?” he almost shouted.

“Why would I teach him to disrespect your step-mother like that?”

“Who, then?”

“You?” After the screech-induced shock abated, I found I was beginning to laugh again. “You talk in your sleep, you know,” I couldn’t help but tease him. “Of your step-mom’s vagina.”

“Aramis! Have mercy!”

“Mercy, you say?” I leaned over him and tugged at the chain. “Have you forgotten that this is your chastisement? Your penance?”

“I repent,” he gasped. “Whatever it is, I repent. If I’d ever done you wrong… coveted your ass…”

“Been insubordinate,” I supplied.

“Yes. That,” he was laughing again. “I repent.”

“Good.” I was moving inside him, pressing into the tight heat with each shove of my hips, shrouded in the potent vapours of lust that rose off him. “Your penance Athos…”

“Heaven! Aramis!”

“You will spend yourself untouched,” I breathed in his ear. He groaned and twisted his head to press his lips to mine.

“How, Aramis?”

“You tell me how.” I slanted my hips to press into him more deeply. “Like that?”

He frowned in concentration. “Do that again.”

I obliged him with a thrust that made his chains rattle. “ _Oh!_ ”

“Like that?” My own lust was spiralling fast. “You need to show me.” I wiped sweat off my brow and ran my hand up and down his spine, watching it curve into my touch. He pressed his chest into the mattress, splayed before me, fucking himself on my cock.

“Like that,” he panted, and his body clamped down on me as if to confirm the veracity of his words. His pulse heaved, his blood boiled in his veins and I bit my own fist, unable to bite him. Unwilling to change the angle, I knelt upright behind him, watching us fuck, fast and hard and filthy, until my eyes closed and nothing remained but the sensation of Athos coming apart.

His eyes were half-lidded when I opened mine again. I was lying by his side, our legs entangled, my hand buried in his hair. He smiled at me lazily when I reached for the key to liberate him from his chains.

“Do you think Porthos guessed the use to which we’d be putting them?”

“Hmm…” I removed the chains and took his hand between mine, rubbing his sore wrist lightly with my thumbs. “Does it hurt?”

He was looking at me with eyes that were at once dark and overbright. “No,” he whispered.

“Good,” I said and kissed his wristbone that was still reddened from the friction inflicted upon it. “I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

“I know,” he said lightly and touched my hair.

“I love Aramis!”

We both jumped. I recovered first, gritting my teeth in fury and exhilaration while Athos fell back into the pillow laughing.

“That bird has to die.”

***

We were anchored at port. The citadel seemed quiet and my own crew had all retired after a goodly night of ribald shenanigans. I had stayed up, despite feeling the fatigue of nightfall, in order to enjoy making the inventory of my newest acquisitions. It was from the latest sally on Cyprus. Now, I knew, technically, they were the same Order - the Knights of Cyprus and the Knights of Rhodes - but I didn’t think my year-old truce had extended that far. And besides, I had only set a _tiny_ fire to that carrack. How was I to know they were carrying all that gunpowder that would burn it up and sink it down?

There was no sense in worrying about such things as a few dead Crusaders when we could have more brum and gold, which meant even more brum, and - even better - wenches. I even had myself a really classy lassy earlier in the night. All black lace and hair as sleek as a horse’s mane. She was a real looker too. At least, I _think_ she was a she? One never knows for sure with these ladies of the night, does one?

I was a bit lost in the pleasant contemplation of my military and libidinous conquests when I heard movement in my cabin.

“Porthos!”

He was wearing his distasteful Crusader garb, but I would have recognized him by the sound of his voice alone.

“Cousin! What brings you to my Octopus at this hour?”

“You are betrayed. You have to come with me,” Athos stretched out his hand. “Now, Porthos!”

“Betrayed? Come with you?”

“Your first mate sold you out to the Hospitallers. They’re angry about the carrack you sank at Cyprus. Now, come!”

“Why, I’ll rip his fucking head off!” I slammed my fist against the wall, denting it.

“Too late. Aramis already did that.”

“Oh, I’ll have to thank him for that,” I scratched my head. That treacherous mongrel, my first mate! Why I should’ve...

“Porthos! You’re wasting time. Even now they’re setting fire to your ship. Can’t you smell that?”

I sniffed at the air, angrily, and then I did catch it - the odor of oil and something else. Something else terrifying. Burning wood.

“My Octopus!” I exclaimed.

“The Grilled Octopus is roasted!” Athos grabbed me and pulled me onto the deck, where I could slowly and horrifically watch chaos unfold before my very eyes. “It’s cooked, my friend. Stick a fork in it and come save yourself!”

A clamor of feet and metal on metal told me that my crew were being slaughtered by deceitful nocturnal invaders.

“It’s too late,” I shook my head. “A captain goes down with his ship. You of all people should know that.” My eyes flashed as I sent a prayer to my own Heavenly Da’, begging him to awaken and fill me with his fiery power. “But I’m not going down without a fight.”

“Damn it, you stubborn ass!” He exclaimed, unsheathing his own sword. “Why won’t you just let me save you?”

“Must run in the family!” I heard behind me, for it was Aramis who had joined us. “Well then? Gentlemen, why are we tarrying?”

“He won’t leave the Octopus!”

“Madness!” Aramis hit me rather hard, for a tiny northerner.

It was then that I saw the dozens of swords of the Hospitallers come into focus behind Athos, gleaming in the moonlight and soaked in honest pirate blood.

“Kill the ogre!” rose up the cry.

I growled, ready to tear out the heart of anyone who came at me, when suddenly, Athos turned towards the Knights and directed his sword at them.

“Back off, gentlemen! This man is our prisoner!”

“What?!” I exclaimed, feeling betrayed all over again.

“Shut _up_ , Porthos!” Aramis pressed his blade against my throat and then whispered hotly, “We _are_ actually trying to save you, you idiot!”

“Captain, your sword,” Athos spoke in that annoyingly commanding voice of his. I handed my sword over to him and crossed my arms over my chest, waiting to observe any further signs of betrayal.

The other Crusader curs appeared appeased and quickly retreated, as the smoke rose up more and more in billows from below deck.

“Trust us,” Athos’ hand was on my shoulder. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”

I met his eyes that were so often tainted by Olympian haughtiness and saw only friendship in them. Aramis had taken hold of my other shoulder and I had become aware that despite my better judgment they were dragging me towards the rails.

“We’re leaving.”

“Now jump.”

***

Three weeks it took me and Aramis to convince Porthos that faking a conversion was the next logical step.

For the first week, he refused to even look at us, pouting in his cell like a spoiled child whose parents had taken away his favorite toy. So profound was his mourning and depression over his Octopus that even I had come to feel some empathetic loss of it myself. Aramis merely rolled his eyes.

“You’d think he lost a limb.”

“He did. Eight of them.”

“Do not encourage him, Athos,” he scowled at me from beneath his immaculate brows, but underneath the façade of a disciplinarian I could still see the spark of humor.

During the second week, our gigantic friend seemed to remember the other stages of grief and had lunged into anger and bargaining simultaneously, trying to convince us to just let him escape so that he could return to piracy.

“You seem to be missing the point, my friend,” Aramis tried to explain as patiently as if he was one of those Christian saints he so doted on. “Firstly, we don’t need to let you escape because you are not truly a prisoner here - you’re our guest. And second, we’re offering you a life much better than pirating.”

“Look, you like to take stuff from people that doesn’t belong to you, right?” I decided to break things down for him, as if he was the child that he was behaving as.

“You make it sound so low when you say it!” Porthos pouted.

“I’m merely focusing on the _pirating_ aspects of piracy,” I shrugged.

“Go on,” he allowed me some leeway.

“These Hospitallers,” I continued, “That’s all they do. They go places and they put a flag with a cross there and then they just appropriate it. And they kill people. You like killing people, don’t you, Porthos?”

“Well, I rather more enjoy the fighting than the killing…”

“Sometimes they let them live!” Aramis threw his lily-white hands up in exasperation. “I believe the point Athos is trying to make is that it’s a pretty lucrative form of employment, and one quite suited to your tastes.”

“But you have to wear those uniforms with the huge red crosses on them!”

“I know,” I shuddered demonstratively. “Tacky. I don’t approve of their sartorial choices myself.” Aramis glowered at me. “But… there’s… money! And as you always say, when there’s money, there’s wenching!” I was really reaching here, nay, scraping the bottom of my own depravity’s barrel.

Finally, in the third week, when he seemed open to the idea of joining the Order with us, we had come to the crux of the dilemma: we had to ostensibly save Porthos’ soul.

“This is the biggest pile of dung! Why do I have to convert? You are a son of the Olympian King of the Gods! And you!” he veered upon Aramis, “you are…”

“What?”

To be fair, I also wouldn’t have continued.

“Er… very pretty,” Porthos sat back down.

“Well, he has a point,” I muttered. Aramis gave me one of those looks that told me that I would pay later, and that I would most likely rather enjoy the form of payment.

“It’s not a _real_ conversion, Porthos!” Aramis resumed his attempts at catechism. “You must merely confess your sins… the highlights would be fine… and then there’s some holy water and the Eucharist and _voilà_! You’re Christian!”

“What if it burns me?”

“What? The holy water?”

“Yes! And that Yuka-Christ.”

“It’s just water and unleavened bread,” I explained. “There’s actually nothing special about it.” Aramis looked as if he was about to protest but then he thought better of it and allowed me to continue. It was clearly not the time to argue about the finer theological points of transubstantiation. “Just think of it as acting!”

“Oh ho ho!” that seemed to amuse the Titan. “Like those actors with the fake cocks on them in one of Aristophanes’ plays?”

“Well, if you like,” I said. “Only minus the fake cocks.”

It was around this time that we had informed the Grand Master that we were eager to try our hand at converting the heathen Scourge of the Seas. I do not need to tell you how mad everyone thought we were, which made our apparent triumph an even bigger miracle in the Hospitallers’ eyes. Being technically monks ourselves, it was perfectly natural for us to try out our best missionary position in front of the infidel. Oh yes, yes I did.

Weeks later, when we had felt that Porthos had mustered enough knowledge and stage presence to effect a convincing religious experience, our Order’s confessor was sent for. He spent roughly an hour cloistered with Porthos in his cell, and when he came out he had earnestly crossed himself and bowed to us.

“Glory to God, gentlemen! The barbarian has found the Lord! He proclaims himself to be a warrior of God and kisses the Cross with fervent lips!”

“It’s a miracle!” Aramis fell to his knees in such perfectly falsified frenzy that I could not fail to follow him.

I too sank to my knees next to him and raised my eyes to Heaven. “Ave Jesus!”

***

The miraculous, glorious and very sudden conversion of the fearsome Ogre of the Mediterranean quite naturally made my thoughts stray to King Jagiełło, about whose own conversion to Christianity I had always had my doubts. Unlike Porthos, who had been tempted by promises of brawls and riches, Jagiełło had been tempted by promises of the Polish crown and marriage to the twelve-year old king: _Hedvigis, Rex Poloniae_. (Rumour had it that he had fallen in love with his child-bride at first sight, which I had always found peculiar. But then, even before the encounter with my three thousand-year-old idol, my tastes had always run to men rather than boys and to women rather than girls.)

From what I had seen, the marriage appeared to be quite happy, in the way that royal marriages which strengthen dynastic bonds often are. I confess I had been rather contrite after I had inadvertently killed the Queen. Athos, in a surprising and rather touching bout of sanguinity, had attempted to console me by pointing out that at least I had not inadvertently bedded her. “You were one of her favourite courtiers,” Athos had said. “She appreciated your melancholy Wallachian charm. Who knows where it all might have ended.”

In truth, the Hungarian-born Queen and I had spoken the same language in more ways than one. She had been the most devout lady, and I had often found myself on her entourage during excursions to convents and schools, which she supported with moneys out of her own coffers, and on one memorable military expedition that she led against a Moldavian upstart. It was on one of such outings that misfortune had struck: the heat of the day had fatigued the monarch, who at that point had already been with child. I never left her side, shading her with my body from the vicious rays that Porthos’ progenitor had seen fit to send upon the Polish marshes. She fell ill even then, struck down by a consumptive fever. She never recovered her good health and faded away, taking her newly-born daughter to the grave with her.

That was when I first learned about the destructive power of my shadow.

A creature like myself, begot by darkness and umbrage, could not stand in the sun for long without harm being done. For reasons that I didn’t fathom until much later, I didn’t suffer from the sun to the same extent as many others among my brethren. It was as if its malicious rays passed through me in the same way that sunlight passes through a pane of glass and emerged on the other side, manifold magnified, where their damaging effect manifested itself in my shadow. A human on whom it fell, and fell repeatedly, would soon be in the grasp of consumption.

I couldn’t help but marvel at the coincidence of me falling in company with an offspring of Sun himself – and not only falling in company but falling in love with him, the kind of love which Athos referred to as _philia_. In my musings, I was inclined to agree with Athos that there was a big Olympian joke in all of this; that our lives and fates were but a comedy performed for the entertainment of the Hellenic Pantheon. (I did not expect that it was for the entertainment for the One God, because, endowed with many excellent qualities as He was, a sense of humour was not one of them.)

“I knew I’d find you here.”

So lazy and lax had I been in my musings that I had not so much as turned my head at the sound of footsteps approaching. His hand alighted on the back of my neck, which tingled under his touch, and I leaned into it.

“It is a beautiful spot.” On the ramparts, tucked away between two chimneys, facing West, whence Zephyrus blew his gentle breath over my heated skin.

“Watching the sun set, my Hyacinthus, while your Anemoi lover bestows kisses on your face?” Athos purred into my ear.

I merely smiled.

He took my hand. “Come and watch the sun rise with me,” he said. “Porthos challenged M. de Milly to compete with him, scimitar in hand. I believe the bloodshed will be most diverting.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We owe a debt of historical gratitude to the Zaporozhian Cossacks for certain parts of this chapter.

**Rhodes, 1444**

No one was more surprised by how seamlessly Porthos fell into the Knighthood than Porthos himself. He immediately acquired a squire who, appropriately, worshipped him like the Sun, and a reputation for charity so earnest that for a moment I had forgotten this conversion had all been a ruse. He was meek and pious with the friars, Herculean in the armory, and so gallant with the local gentry that certain husbands rightly started to keep a closer eye on their wives.

But speaking of roving eyes, one day as we three sat down to a shared repast, Aramis mentioned that he did not like the way Bastien had been looking at me. I made quick inventory of looks, at least the ones I could recall, and came to the astute conclusion that, in all fairness, my lover likely also objected to the way I looked at Bastien.

“Does he? I haven’t noticed,” I reacted as I understood a man should react in such circumstances.

“That’s odd. You who is so observant.” My beloved’s tone ran as cold as the purple-winged Boreas blows.

In truth, I may not have noticed Bastien looking at me, but I certainly had noticed the boy had blossomed into a rather comely youth. You know me for an aficionado of all things beautiful, so perhaps I had not escaped my parentage in that regard. Being with Aramis over the years, I fell into a monogamy heretofore unknown and unnatural to me. My flittermouse was so perfect in every aspect, that I had no reason to look upon anyone else. But, damn it, I still had _eyes_.

“No one is looking at anything, Aramis,” I replied quietly.

“He shouldn’t be lifting his eyes to you at all. He’s my servant; it isn’t proper.”

“Don’t eat the servant!” Raoul screeched as if on cue and Aramis tossed his fork at the cage.

“Next time, it’ll be my knife!” he declared, digging his nails into the palms of his hands.

“Aramis, I must say, the bird is correct,” Porthos, whom I knew to hate any kind of discord between us, interjected. “You must simply not throw stones and turn the other cheek, like Jesus in the desert.”

From across the table, Aramis mouthed ‘ _What??_ ’ at me and I smiled widely back at him. It was like watching our baby take his first steps, into a river of monotheism into which I myself frequently urinated. However, I had been grateful for the distraction Porthos’ moralizing provided.

“So, how about that Sultan of Egypt?” I changed the subject. Sayf-ad-Din Jaqmaq, the name only remembered in history as the man who had failed to take Rhodes. Twice. Not even a mole-hill is named after him.

“Nasty little man,” Porthos expounded, shoving an entire quail into his mouth as he spoke. “I sacked a war ship of his once. No sense of style. Did you know they still use galleys? Lots of spices though!”

“What did you do with the galley slaves?” Aramis asked, no longer interested in murdering either the bird or the servant, for the time being.

I was never more grateful to Porthos for his gift of gab as I was during times like these. I was perfectly content to finish my meal while listening to them discussing the finer points of seasoning and the ethics of whether or not it was truly Christian to sink galley ships.

The next morning, I awoke to discover my arms empty and the spot in the bed next to me cold. I rubbed the vestiges of sleep out of my eyes, burrowed out of my coverings, and padded bared-footed into the antechambre, assuming I’d find Aramis there pouring over one of his theological treatises. I was vexed to not locate him inside, and then a tingle in the back of my mind told me to keep going, down the corridor towards the stables, where the servants were housed.

The door to the servants’ shared stall had been ajar and I rubbed the bridge of my nose before I pushed it completely open, knowing what I would find in there.

Aramis was sitting on the makeshift bed, immobile as marble. Behind him, Bastien lay with his head pillowed upon the hay as if in perfect repose. Only his unnatural pallor and the two neat puncture wounds in his neck were any indication that anything had been amiss.

Aramis looked up at me, his eyes full of desperate contrition, and whispered, “He did not suffer.”

I stood before him and took his hands in mine. “I know,” I spoke quietly. “It’s all right.” I felt his fingers squeeze my own in silent gratitude. I did not look at the boy again, my looks had cost him enough.

Like Jesus in the desert, I was not. Did he think he had to remove the temptation because I would not be able to resist it, I wondered. Or was it simply in his nature to eradicate that which he deemed to be predatory? I’d seen him kill out of vengeance, and now I had seen him kill out of love, and in truth, neither was better or worse than the killing I had done myself out of pride and in the name of honor. If he thought himself a monster, then so was I.

“I’ll get Grigoriy to take care of this,” I said. “Go back to bed.”

***

_I, Sultan, Brother of the Sun and the Moon, Grandson of God, and Governor by His Heavenly Grace, monarch over the nations of Syria, Babylon, Jerusalem and Egypt, ruler above all rulers, illustrious knight, undefeated leader, never-vanquished defender of the City of God, enforcer of God’s will, bringer of hope and peace to the Muslims, bringer of fear to the Christians – I order you, Knights of Rhodes, to submit to me of your own free will, to withdraw your ships from the sea over which I rule, and to surrender the island that you usurped in violation of the rules of the Sultan and God.  
Sultan of Egypt, Sayf-ad-Din Jaqmaq_

I enunciated every syllable of his name and looked up at my audience. Athos’ dark eyes were narrowed in disgust and his lips had thinned into a line that implied that a bad taste had violated his mouth which he spat out with an exaggerated grimace. Porthos’ eyes were so wide that the white threatened to swallow the black. He stared at me in silence for the span of a heartbeat or two, and then broke out in that bellowing laugh of his that still made the more timid among our fellow Knights Hospitaller jump.

“Surrender!” Porthos guffawed. “Who does he think he is?”

“He says very clearly who he thinks he is.” Athos dropped his words like shards of ice and took the letter from my hand, scanning it as if he doubted the veracity of my words.

“You copied it,” he said.

“To share it with you. I knew you’d understand how I felt having to write the answer to this.”

“A task I’m sure you performed admirably.”

“A task that I performed to the Grand Master’s orders. He dictated every word.”

“That’s your reward for having such a neat hand, my diabolic amanuensis,” Athos said, kissing said hand as gallantly as if he were wooing a lady. I flashed my fangs at him.

“Hang on,” Porthos said, guffaws turning to rumble and drying up. “Brother of the _Sun_?”

“And the Moon,” Athos helpfully added oil to the fire the way only he knew how.

“Auntie Selene? That would make him my uncle,” Porthos mused, and Athos raised his eyebrows at me. I crossed my arms before my chest, awaiting the inevitable. “And if he’s my uncle, he must be your relative, too, Athos.”

“Indeed.”

“That makes him family.”

“He is the grandson of God,” Athos said, with a sideway glance at me. I rolled my eyes demonstratively.

“Which god?” Porthos asked, forgetting about his devout dedication to his newly found monotheistic faith in the heat of the moment.

“I think it’s fair to assume he means the highest god,” Athos said.

“That would make him… hold on… your grand, er…”

I took pity on him. “His nephew.”

“My uncle and your nephew…” Porthos narrowed his eyes. “And we’re cousins.”

“Second cousins.”

“Second cousins. That can’t be right. He must have got confused.”

Athos looked at me and I sighed.

“We should put him right,” Porthos voiced the inevitable.

“Excellent idea!” Athos exclaimed in sudden and unexpected animation.

“Terrific,” I said and groaned under the arm of Porthos that slung itself around my shoulder like a tentacle of the giant marine creature of which he was so fond.

“You can put that neat hand of yours – which I am not going to kiss – to good use,” he boomed into my ear, twirling his moustache. “We’ll tell you what to write.”

I looked at Athos and saw the kindling of a smile begin to gleam in the corners of his mouth. My blood heaved and my body was flung into an instant state of ire and arousal. Taking care of correspondence was one of my duties as secretary to the Grand Master, and I had written many an epistle that made me want to scrub my hand clean afterwards. Athos usually took care of the irritation that inflamed my mind and body with unsurpassable skill and patience. It appeared he had other plans tonight. _Are you sure?_ my eyes communicated what my mouth did not.

Athos was already uncorking a flagon of wine. “He is family, it’s only polite.”

“Exactly!” Porthos took the wine from Athos’ hands and drank deeply. “The Grand Master had to spout that formal dribble, but family… family don’t have to mince words.”

_From the Knights of the Order of St. John, on Rhodes, to the Sultan of Egypt:_

I paused with my quill in the air. My companions’ merriment had not quite infected me yet, even though Porthos made sure to refill my cup the moment I had taken a sip. That was not the drink that I hungered for. It has been too long. My servant had been too young, too unformed, his blood too weak. It lacked the spice of battle-born lust and fury to satisfy the craving. I almost regretted drinking him; he had aggravated my thirst rather than quenching it. Athos and I would have to find a convenient time for me to feed soon, or I might find myself stalking my fellow knights in the corridors at night-time.

“What kind of insults are particularly vile to the Egyptians?” I turned to Porthos, who had had many dealings with our southern neighbours, in most of which insults had played an indispensable role.

Porthos drank deeply from his goblet and tugged at his moustache. “Ah, you know. Implying they had anything to do with pigs… or dogs…”

“Or with their mothers’ vaginas?”

He stared at me in that speechless guilelessness of the child that he was at heart, and then bellowed out another magnificent laugh. “That’s an insult with _everyone_.”

“Not with his family,” I pointed at Athos who was glaring at me over the rim of his cup. “I understand that it’s positively encouraged.”

Porthos was laughing so hard it all but made the walls of the citadel shake.

“What about buggery?” Athos had regained his poise and joined in with gusto. “That’s usually quite frowned upon in all of those new-fangled monotheistic cultures.”

“Buggery!” I said. “That is all you think of, isn’t it?”

“Whereas you’ve been mentioning vagina a lot lately.”

Porthos stopped laughing and looked from Athos to me and back again, searching our faces for traces of anger. He appeared deeply attuned to our moods and it gave him pain if he thought Athos and I quarrelled. Athos smiled his charming smile at him, and then lifted my free hand to his lips and kissed the pads of my fingers. I couldn’t help it this time: a smile escaped me, too. A moment later, I was laughing with them as we revelled in the ridiculousness of our wine-soaked undertaking.

“O Sultan”, I began, paused with my quill poised, and Athos leaned in and pronounced very clearly:

“Piss of my dog.”

“Scum of my boot!” Porthos said happily.

“…and buggerer of sows and bitches alike,” I concluded with a flourish of my quill, to Porthos’ unbridled mirth. “There you go, Athos. Buggery. Hm…” I mused, twirling my quill, “When you crouch down to shit, a tentacle thrusts through your arse and comes out your mouth. No. Too long - excuse the pun - and it doesn’t rhyme.”

“And to think!” Porthos exclaimed, sloshing a generous helping of wine into my cup, “That I was beginning to fear you were nothing but a monkish scribe after all and that the bitey nudist had been an apparition sent to me by Morpheus.”

“Is Morpheus family?” I inquired casually and was immediately chastised.

“Don’t change the subject,” Athos said and turned to Porthos. “What should we do rather than surrender to the Sultan?”

“Shit in his soup, cut off his balls, and mount them on a pike,” Porthos shot back without thinking.

Athos gazed at him with the unfocussed dark eyes of the thoroughly sloshed. “Did you hear that, Aramis?” he tapped my wrist with his forefinger. “Write that down.”

_O Sultan, Piss of my Dog, Scum of my Boot, and Buggerer of Sows and Bitches alike._

_Instead of surrendering to you, we will shit in your soup, cut off your balls, and mount them on a pike._  
_You are a worm among men, a gnat among cormorants, and the flea of the mangiest dog._  
_May your sister get knocked up by a frog in a bog._  
_May you and your mother and your grandmother get fucked in the arse by a hog._

_Let it be known that you soil your bed, that your cock’s long dead, and of this we are glad! What Lucifer shits, your army eats. A squid through your butt slithers its arms in your gut. Your camels smell vile but they are fertile and your men them defile. Babies cry when you walk on by, women scream for you smell of latrine, mirrors break in disgrace at the sight of your face. Bumba himself would un-vomit you good, and Jesus would piss where you stood._

_And that’s the word from Rhodes, so written by our balls, and sealed with a kiss to our arse from your lips._

I enunciated every syllable of the letter and looked up at my audience, who had acquired too many eyes in the course of the night’s libations and were blinking at me like the Ophanim. I blinked back, for my vision was blurry.

Porthos took the quill from my hand and scratched the following letters across the bottom half of the parchment: “Your loving Nephew Porthos”.

“And now,” he pronounced, looking around the room, “Fetch me Raoul.”

“Raoul?” Athos appeared to sober up momentarily. “Why Raoul?”

“He’s going to deliver the letter, of course,” Porthos explained with a magnificent flourish of his large hand. “Don’t worry. He can do it. He may be a mongrel, but he’s of noble blood. His Da’ was a firebird.”

***

As the Sun rose over Rhodes the next morning, I was feeling quite pleased with myself. I felt we had sufficiently shown that Egyptian weasel-fucker what for, and I slept the sleep of the triumphant during what little there was left of night.

Athos and Aramis, however, had apparently both gotten up on the wrong side of the bed. Perhaps it was their nocturnal acrobatics that had landed them there. Regardless of the cause, they appeared ready to do to each other what I was looking forward to doing to the Sultan of Egypt since the moment I heard he professed himself a blood relative.

“How could you let me send it!” Aramis was on the verge of rending his magnificent hair.

“Since when am I the Lord Commander of anything you do?” Athos objected, in my opinion, unjustly. I think he’d been the Lord Commander of Aramis ever since they met. But hey, no one was asking my opinion. “And since when do you even listen to me when I’m clearly in my cups?”

“When are you _not_ in your cups?”

“Hey, if you’re feeling a little anemic because it’s that time of the month, maybe we should just go hunting tonight so you can get it out of your system!”

“Friends, brothers, lovers, etcetera!” I interrupted them before things got even more offensive.

“You!” Aramis now veered on me. “Equally vile fiend! The both of you will be the death of me. Or, you know, at least get me roundly dismissed from my post!”

“Oh, please,” Athos rolled his eyes, “De Lastic would never dismiss you! It would be impossible to replace you!”

“Just because you find me indispensable yourself, doesn’t mean…”

“Aramis, really, I think you’re overreacting,” I interjected again before they came to blows.

“They’re definitely not going to lift the siege now,” Aramis shook his lustrous locks.

“We don’t care whether or not they lift the siege,” Athos shrugged. “We _want_ to fight them.”

“I know I do,” I added.

“The letter wasn’t _that_ bad!” Athos waved his hand dismissively.

“Do you not _remember_ it? Because I made a copy!” Aramis went into his folio and drew out a sheet of paper which he proceeded to wave rather militantly in Athos’ face.

Athos took the parchment out of his hand and quickly scanned it with his eyes, during which time he waged a noble but lost battle against the encroachment of laughter that bordered upon paroxysms.

“Oh. Oh my,” Athos hyperventilated, “I forgot we had managed to make it rhyme as well.”

I took the parchment out of his hand to refresh my own memory. It was a magnificent piece of work, some of our finest. I maintained so then, and will always hold to that opinion.

“We are doomed,” Aramis pronounced with a heavy heart. “De Lastic will have us all thrown out of the Order for this. Which, I realize, you pagan miscreants, that this is no big loss to the two of you. But I happen to actually _enjoy_ being a Hospitaller.”

“They’re better than those Teutonic dicks we fought in Poland,” Athos agreed.

“Oh sure, everything is relative with you. Literally.” Aramis looked as if he might actually start crying. Not that he ever would. He’d probably bite me merely for the suggestion.

“Besides, Aramis, what are you worried about?” Athos attempted to soothe him by running his hand up his back the way he would calm a raging dog. “It’s not like the Sultan is ever going to get that letter. Raoul is not a homing pigeon.”

“He’s half phoenix!” I defended the parrot’s honor. “That bird will rise from his own ashes, you hear me! He can damn well deliver the letter that I very clearly told him to deliver to the Sultan of Egypt.”

“Not helping, Porthos,” Athos hissed at me.

“I also seem to vaguely recall,” Aramis scrunched up his brow as if in agony, “you teaching him a few choice parting words.”

“Jaqaq’s cunt?”

“We’re going to be excommunicated,” Aramis sighed.

“By the Islamists?” Athos asked. _Now_ who wasn’t helping?

A commotion below told us that our little ruse of the night before had probably been discovered.

“I guess the Sultan got our message,” Athos announced phlegmatically.

Aramis crossed himself, much to Athos’ vexation. I suggested that we descend to the courtyard and learn to cause of the general hubbub and they both followed me silently.

“What happened?” I tapped the first Knight I saw on the shoulder. He bent beneath my touch in a reverential bow.

“Messenger from the Sultan of Egypt.”

“What’s the word?”

“The most extraordinary thing, friend Porthos!” the Knight exclaimed. I did not know his name so I just grinned at him brightly to continue. “They sent us the head of a parrot!”

“Oh my Gods! Raoul!” Athos moved past me to behold what seemed to be a silver platter. With the parrot’s head on it. My cousin appeared so distraught that he forgot to feign this monotheism we were all playing at. “Barbarians! What have they done to you, you poor, sweet child!”

“Is there a letter with that?” Aramis asked, seemingly unmoved by Athos’ despair.

I parted the crowd to approach the platter as well, and gently prodded the disembodied head.

“So much for rising from his ashes,” Athos signed, poking at the bird’s opened beak.

“Monsters!” I exclaimed. “This is an affront against the entire Order! Why, I’ll tear them apart with my bare hands for this!”

“Surely, you’re both jesting,” Aramis muttered and looked about. “Really? No other message?”

“Isn’t this inhumane cruelty message enough!” I proclaimed to the skies above.

“Heartless fiend! He was like a son to me!” Athos declared.

“He was a parrot.”

“You have no sense of poetry.”

“I disagree on the basis of last night’s events.”

“Gentlemen, please,” I came between the two of them again. “Now is not the time for squabbling like women! We must bury our fallen comrade. And then,” my nostrils flared, “we must avenge him!”

“I shall build you the tiniest funeral pyre upon the ramparts,” Athos promised to the bird-head, while gently stroking it. I shook my head silently. Those Mahometans had transgressed against the symbol of our brotherhood. They would have to pay dearly for this affront.

“Rest in peace, feathered friend,” I wiped a tear from my eye, I’m not ashamed to admit.

“There has to be more to his reply than this!” Aramis exclaimed, insensate to our joint sense of loss.

It was then that the canons from the Sultan’s war ships fired upon our citadel.

***

As much as I loved Porthos, I could not but suspect that he was a bad influence on my lover. I had long known of Athos' lush proclivities - and who was I to begrudge him his love for wine, seeing as my own life's pursuits revolved to a great measure around the next drink? Yet ever since we'd come to Greece, his excesses had grown more, well, excessive.

I sometimes thought that, living in such close proximity to his family, he had somehow reverted to that wayward son who had fucked his father's daughter, defied his gods and turned the punishment inflicted on him into a hilarious and salacious prank. And to be fair, after meeting his family, I could understand him better than ever. I had always assumed the catamite nest on Mount Athos had been born out of the desire to claim as many _eromenoi_ arses as possible. I now thought that it had been an attempt to emulate his father, who had brought some of his favourite lovers to serve him on his Mount. It must have been difficult for Immortals; for where human men and women grew older, human offspring grew up to take up their place as heads of the family. The son of a god was an eternal child. Perhaps that was why they were as likely to slaughter their relatives as to fuck them.

Perhaps it was his regained adolescence that had rendered Athos as devout in his worship of me as he had been devouring when first we met. I confess it had taken me an embarrassingly long time to realise that Athos' upbringing meant he had been somebody's eromenos himself as a boy. And the way his body begged to be taken, I imagined his erastes must have been a dexterous and dedicated lover. I had known he loved me fucking him just as much as I loved him fucking me, ever since that anger-fuelled night in the Masurian forests. Yet now... now he appeared to crave punishment as much as pleasure. His old flagrum saw quite a bit of action, and Grigoriy and, most recently, Lysis, kept the chains well-oiled.

Lysis. I frowned, thinking of my latest acquisition. He had shown up one day, not long after Bastien's untimely death, wrapped in a dark cloak that was much too large for his bony frame and an air of insignificance. Athos didn't even look up from the manuscript he had smuggled out from the scriptorium to add drawings of birds with their heads and feathers on fire to the margins. He always maintained that future generations would get more pleasure out of his drawings than from the long and for the most part inaccurate theological treatises.

I took Lysis in my employ with indifference. I didn't expect him to last, but I'd promised Athos - with a clear conscience - that his blood was safe from me.

"He's just a boy," I'd shrugged in reply to Athos' sceptic smirk. "You know that I have no interest in children. Their blood has no flavour. No, nothing but the blood of a man - or a god," I leaned down to where he was seated and kissed him on the top of his head, "Will do to satisfy me."

"I believe he's older than he looks," Athos had said, but that was the only opinion he ever voiced on this subject of my new lackey. We soon forgot about Lysis, who appeared to materialise when needed and to dissolve like an aerial spirit after fulfilling his duties. It seemed I had been granted my own Grigori at last.

Well. At least under Porthos' Argus eyes Athos' own would not stray. Leaning on the ramparts in my favourite spot between the chimneys, I looked over the sea, to where a ship carried my lover and our titanic friend behind enemy lines. It won't surprise you that, avoiding travelling on water wherever I could, I had not volunteered for what might have been called a suicide mission had the parties involved not been immortal. Their manoeuvre might help end the siege and disband the Egyptian menace. My place was in the citadel, where my, as my fellow Hospitallers said, uncanny ability to see in the dark proved useful for thwarting attacks carried out under the cover of night.

A thunderous roar tore through nature's evensong, as if Athos' own father had tossed his bolt at the citadel. The Egyptians attacked again, with tedious predictability. I sighed and turned away from the ramparts. It was time for my evening repast.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning: this chapter includes a dub-con scene**. Not Aramis/Athos dub-con. They are very, very consensual and constantly all over each other. The gross beasts.

I returned to the citadel, my hands still soaked in the blood of Egyptians. We had dealt the Sultan a decisive blow on our sally, but the blockade still stubbornly held. Over a month now of this ridiculous back and forth. Did Jaqmaq really think he could wait us out? The island was well resourced and the citadel was armed to the teeth, even without counting furtive immortals among its combatants. My estimate was that the Sultan would not withstand another sally like the one we had just returned from.

I could not locate Grigoriy anywhere, but Aramis’ new valet silently placed a basin of water before me and turned to go.

“Where’s your master?” I asked, irate not to find Aramis in our rooms.

“The Grand Master sent him on an errand,” Lysis replied and again began to back out of the room.

“And where’s Grigoriy?” I asked as I began my ablutions.

“Went to town on a supply run.”

That was odd. He should have waited for me to return from battle, the scampering gargoyle. I made a mental note to give his backside an admonishing kick later. My muscles involuntarily reached in the direction where I normally kept corked flagons of wine, and my consternation grew to find the shelf empty. If that had been the supply run that Grigoriy had gone on, then he would be forgiven upon his return.

I collapsed into one of the chairs and closed my eyes, inhaling deeply the lingering, phantom smell of the almond oil that still permeated the air. I smiled and imagined Aramis there with me. His diabolical grin, his acerbic words that did more to mollify than to irritate me, his fingers raking through my hair like a possessive tigress grooming her young.

“Your meal, sir,” Lysis had placed a plate and a cup on the table before me and dissipated again like a shadow. 

I reached for the cup first and was gratified to find it filled with wine. I felt no hunger, having sated myself on the heat of battle, but I seemed to have a mighty thirst that not even the wine was able to quench. Why had de Lastic decided to send Aramis away now of all times? I shut my eyes again, willing my blood to resume its normal mode of circulation. My head spun and the chair did not properly support me. The last of the wine had been stronger than I anticipated. I felt the need to lie down.

I made it to our bed through what felt like a gauntlet of yawns. My lids felt so heavy that my brows strained to keep them lifted. Usually, battle left me feeling invigorated, what was this sluggish lassitude besetting me? The last time I had felt this way had been…

_The blazing rays over Mt. Olympus. The blood-stained altar. The sacrificial cakes._

No. That was a long time ago.

Although the stirred up memory made me ache for Aramis again. I reached out towards him with my mind and willed him to return as I sank into the bed. But no, I had no such powers. I could no more pull him to me than I appeared to have strength to keep my eyes opened. So I let them close and settled into a pleasant repose.

I was brought out of my stupor some time later by the brush of fabric against my face. I reached out and grabbed the fine material, pulling it to my nose and inhaling the scent trapped by the fibres. I smiled. _Aramis_. Perhaps my mind had pulled him back after all. I wanted to speak but my tongue and eyelids still felt heavy as I continued to be lulled in the arms of Morpheus.

His light touch lingered over my face and then traveled over my arms. My body was abuzz with an influx of warmth and I hummed, hands reaching out for him without me having to consciously move them. Apparently, my lover had other plans for my hands because I felt the chains (which we had conveniently left attached to the headboard) being slipped around my wrists.

“But I want to touch you,” I finally complained, still feeling overwhelmed by the wine and the scent of him all around me. His lips brushed against my forehead in a soothing touch and I whimpered in my bonds. Oh gods, how was it possible to want someone so much for so long and not die from it?

I felt his hands make quick work of my breeches, removing what accoutrements I haven’t been bothered to shed before taking myself to bed. I always did admire the speed and focus that he applied to peeling me like an artichoke. I was hard before he even touched me, but I could feel the weight of him, hovering over me, just out of reach. I arched off the bed, becoming more and more awake, loving and hating the chains for keeping me in place and at his mercy.

“Aramis,” I moaned as I felt his mouth engulf me. His mouth so hot and slick and… Wait… What…

My eyes flew opened and through a haze I commanded them to focus on the man in front of me.

“Lysis?” I heaved forward, almost breaking free of my bonds.

“Look again,” the boy said, pushing me back down onto the bed with a strength not of a mortal.

Terrified and confused, I watched as the boy’s features molded into different lines, features all too familiar to me and I cried out in horror.

“Eris!”

“Hello Athos,” she straddled my hips, her nails digging into my chest to keep me in place. “I’ve missed you.”

“I…” It was her. It was _her_. Oh, I was completely overcome. “Don’t… don’t do this. You know what will happen.”

“Do I?”

“Don’t you?”

“But I’ve _missed_ you,” she purred, her hand working over my tumescent length. I willed my unruly cock to stand down, but it would not listen to my commands when it was completely at her mercy.

"Is that... Are you wearing Aramis' shirt?" I asked through the fog in my mind. 

"Mmhmm," she grinned, "conveniences of serving on him these past few days." That thieving godling! But the fog, at least, was slowly lifting. 

“I can’t. We _can’t_.” I tried to unseat her, but she hung on and only replied with one of her charming, girlish giggles. Oh, Discord, how I loved you, how I venerated you, as a Goddess, as a concept, and as a woman!

“Please,” I breathed out even as I felt myself growing harder instead of slackening under her touch. “Mother will be very angry. Mostly at me. Which isn’t fair at all.”

She laughed again and unfurled her magnificent black wings. Electricity bristled through her feathers and her eyes glowed with a preternatural fire.

_A shower of black feathers raining down on me from the mouth of Olympus._

“You think you can just pop in for a visit like that and leave me again for another three thousand years?” she asked sliding up along my body, her lips brushing softly against mine. “You think you’ve found someone worthy of replacing me at last?” She bit into my lower lip, the same way Aramis often did. Her long, black hair fell onto my chest, a cascade of perdition. “Do you really not love me anymore, Athos?” I moaned helplessly, shutting my eyes, willing my brain to focus on anything other than the pressure of her body against mine. I could feel the wetness between her thighs. I could smell her divine essence emanating and marking me as her own again. “Say it, say you don’t love me anymore.”

“Eris, please,” I begged. 

“I like the way you say my name. Say it again.”

“Eris!”

It was too late. She had slipped over me, and I had slid inside her, sheathing my cock in that soft and scalding heat of hers.

“No!”

“Don’t be scared, lover,” she whispered, thighs gripping onto my hips like onto the saddle. “You feel so good inside me. So hard. So big, Athos. So right. You always were my favorite, you know.”

“Why… why…” Why did it still feel… so good? I pulled uselessly at my restraints, not sure what I would do if I actually managed to break free. Would I slap her off my cock like the willful daughter of our Father that she was? Or would I use my liberated arms to pull her close and hold her tight in a way that I hadn’t been able to do in millenia? Were the restrains really there to protect me from myself? To give me plausible deniability? Was this Discord at her most merciful?

“You’re thinking so _loudly_ , brother.” She laughed again and kissed me, the kisses of the battlefield, of Discord and War, and chariots and fires. “You should stop thinking and take me. Who knows when you’ll get the chance again.”

The fire kindled in her eyes again and my restraints were gone. In a flash, my arms were around her, hands digging into the joints of her wings, crushing the raven quills of her feathers beneath my fingers, just right, the way that always pulled those obscene moans of pleasure out of her. I thrust up into her, the destructive heat of her, pressed her closer, her breasts crushed against my chest, and I buried my face in her neck. Her shriek of triumph was an Amazonian battle cry.

She threw me down on the bed again when she was done, rising gloriously naked but for her long hair and splayed out wings over my spent body.

“I wonder if I shall ever see you again,” she said, looking down upon me. Her toy. Her victim.

“Eris,” I grabbed her ankle before she took flight. “Whatever happens to me for this… I hope it makes you happy. I want you to be happy.”

“You _did_ love me, then,” she sighed, her fingers brushing against my temple. And then a blackness enveloped me.

***

When I awoke from Eris’ spell, Aramis had been lying in bed next to me, watching me with soft and unfocused eyes. I turned my head towards the window and saw only the dark night sky. Porthos’ Auntie Selene, if she was out, must have been hiding her face.

“Good sea battle?” he asked.

“What day is this?”

“Tuesday. Well, Wednesday now, more precisely. ”

“What year?”

“Did a boom hit your head again?”

“Aramis, just…”

“Fourteen hundred forty-four, _anno domini_. Why?”

“Strange dream,” I replied and slid out of bed. A feeling of foreboding so strong sat in my chest that being near him made me feel as if my blood had begun to run backwards in my body. I stood by the window, looking out at the dark sea and Jaqmaq’s blockade, the lights from the ships like fireflies on the horizon.

“Nightmares?” He followed me, and soon I felt his arms snake around my torso and his lips alighted on the back of my neck. 

“Have you seen Grigoriy?” I asked. I did not want him to touch me, yet at the same time, I wanted nothing more than to beg him to hold me tighter. Out there, in the darkness of the night, something was waiting for me, and it threatened to tear me apart. 

“No, come to think of it. Lysis is nowhere to be found, as well.” I felt him shrug behind me, his palms pressed into my abdomen, holding me flush against him. “Why do I have the worst luck with servants? Is it me?”

“It wasn’t you,” I whispered and closed my eyes. As soon as I did so, I saw her face again. I knew I hadn’t dreamt her. She was as real to me as Aramis was at that moment, his breath ghosting against the nape of my neck. Could he smell her on me? His forehead pressed into the base of my skull like an affectionate cat. “I love you, you know that,” I said before I could check my tongue.

“Of course you do,” he nuzzled into me, lips pressed just below my earlobe. “I’m very desirable and you have impeccable taste.” I smiled and my abs jolted under his palms in a single breath of a chuckle. “And I love you,” he added, more quietly.

Somehow, this did not dissipate the gathering dread in my heart. “I should go find Grigoriy,” I mumbled, extricating myself out of his arms. “I’m… worried,” I confessed.

“Then I’ll go with you.”

A part of me wanted to get away, the guilt of what had transpired with Discord gnawing at my insides. But another part of me was glad to have him at my side, as always. Perhaps after three thousand years Hera’s curse had worn off, and nothing would happen. I knew I was deluding myself - her curse was what kept me immortal, it had not worn off any more than I had begun to feel the ravages of time.

We walked towards the stables in relative silence, interrupted only once when we passed Porthos’ rooms.

“Is he…?”

“He’s fine,” I replied. 

“Good.”

I anticipated what I would find before we even entered. I could tell myself it was just another misfortune in the string of misfortunes we had recently suffered. That bad things came in threes. First Bastien, then Raoul, and now… I swallowed and walked into the stall. And now Grigoriy. But this… this wasn’t a parrot, and the timing was too suspicious to be coincidental.

Aramis muttered a prayer behind me.

I walked up the empty shell that my Grigori had occupied for so long and closed his eyes. 

“He was very old,” I said, trying to convince myself of the veracity of my own words. “It was his time.”

“Well, what happens now though?” I felt Aramis’ hand on my shoulder. It pulsated with the life of another. He had recently fed, but I had no suspicions that this was his doing. “You said your Grigori will always find you.”

“He will. But… I don’t know when or where.”

“So you just… wait?”

“I wait,” I said, frowning at the inconvenience of it. Now neither one of us had a valet. And with the siege still not lifted, we’d be hard pressed to find anyone to take over their duties. “I guess you’re just going to have to put my armor on me yourself,” I smiled at Aramis, hoping that levity at this moment would shroud my inner turmoil.

“And you mine on me, I suppose.”

“Perhaps we should practice taking it off as well.”

“You are as wise as the Seven Sages of Greece combined.”

“Well, Chilon of Sparta was an idiot!” I objected. “ _You should not desire the impossible_. If I followed his pessimistic advice, I would never have followed you to Snagov.”

“Are you calling me impossible?”

I laughed and then remembered myself. “We… should arrange his burial before we… um…”

“Yes, quite. With the witty repartee. Timing.”

“Right.”

But with him standing at my side, even as we gazed dolorously upon poor Grigoriy’s mortal coil, I had dared to hope that perhaps the extent of Hera’s curse was already expiated. It was a price I was willing to pay if it meant that the worst was now behind us.

***

Reading my accounts, you may think that it was Athos’ beauty that drove me to him. And it is true that my love for him had grown out of the desire to touch that body of marble and make it come alive under my hands and mouth. Yet the reason why I had remained with him for all those years and hoped to remain for many centuries to come was simply that he was the noblest man I had ever met. It was his distinguished air, his flashes of greatness and magnificence that surpassed everything a mere human was capable of. I used to call it “heathen insolence”, yet it was so much more: it was an air of true, effortless grandeur. He carried a majesty of spirit and manner with calm, unshakeable confidence. Where he went, I would follow. His remonstrations made me want to be a better man.

Even though I was aware that he was oftentimes guided by caprice and by the impish desire to gain as much amusement out of other people’s follies and failings as he could, I knew also that I was the only one to whom his moods were obvious. To other people, he presented the sweetest uniformity of temper. Porthos stood in awe of him as the son of the highest god of their pantheon, and as a man who was superior in intellect, strength, elegance, nobility to all others. In short, Athos was a demigod, and it astounded me that his divine provenience went unnoticed, even though he did nothing – save for changing his name – to disguise it.

And in all that, there was a rare fragility to him. The delicacy of his heart meant that pain penetrated it more deeply than it penetrated other men’s. After Grigoriy was gone, Athos sat in our room, still and silent like the marble sculpture that he so much resembled, staring out of the window with unseeing eyes. This is how I found him when I returned after a day of busy errands. We were still under siege, Egyptian ships buzzed like a cloud of mosquitoes around our heads, and the decision had been made to attack their fleet. I was in favour of it, even though it would mean travelling on board ship. So many enemies, so much angry blood boiling within reach, yet separated by a stretch of water that I didn’t particularly care to cross. Fortunately, they did also come on land, where I lay waiting in the shadows. But those were mere snacks. The opulent feast was spread too far away. I needed to immerse myself in the heat of the battle, to feel the rhythm of the war drums pound through my body, to slay men and drink their blood amidst the coil and simmer of thrashing, dying, killing, irate flesh.

Athos tore his gaze away from the window and looked at me. He must have read my desires in my face, because he smiled that ancient, knowing smile that made my heart clench like a fist ready to strike. He smelled of battle. He had come back last night and had not washed off the blood and sweat of combat. He smelled like he had done all those years ago, when I first came to him on the battlefield in Wallachia. I was about to call for Grigoriy to fetch a basin and hot water, but I caught myself just in time. I felt the loss of Athos’ guardian angel keenly. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the extent of Athos’ pain. To him, it was like losing a limb.

I pressed a kiss to his hair and tasted dried blood. I squeezed his hand. “Wait for me,” I said and left. I grabbed the first squire I came upon in the corridors and gave him orders to set up a bath in our rooms. Defiance flashed up in the boy’s eyes – we were under siege, he probably thought there were more pressing matters he should be tending to – but he didn’t object, as I knew he wouldn’t.

“This is very thoughtful,” Athos said in a touching attempt at levity when I returned, pointing at the steaming basin. “Or is this your way of telling me I stink, my subtle kitten?”

“You weren’t in the mood to visit the bathhouse today,” I shrugged, picking up his flippant tone and running with it. “And you do stink.” I kissed him on the temple. “Come on, let’s get you out of those clothes. Show me how Grigoriy used to do it.”

I had him seated in the chair, body arched backwards, as I sponged the worst of the grime off him. He was passive and pliant, and it worried me. There was a new wound across his lower ribs, almost completely healed already. I could tell that it had been a deep cut and I wondered how much energy it had cost him to heal.

“Tip your head back,” I told him, motioning him gently until his hair hung in the basin. He shuddered when I poured warm water over it and began to massage in soap. The suds mingled with dirt and blood and streaked into the basin. An augur might have been able to read the future from those swirling patterns. But, alas, an augur I was not.

His lashes trembled against his cheeks, his lips were barely parted, his brow unfurrowed. His countenance reflected such serenity, I felt almost guilty for displacing him again, as I moved the filth-filled basin away and began to lather his face with soap. Like all of his possessions, his razor was of stunning quality: a blade so thin and sharp it could slice through a ray of light, and an ivory handle that nestled into my palm and appeared to guide my hand like a living creature. I worked around the familiar contours of his face, scraping off the days-old beard that had made him look quite the savage and laying bare those beloved features. When I moved down the length of his neck, removing the last traces of soap, he opened his eyes.

“Do it,” he whispered.

My hand stilled. “Athos…” I said, for he was in one of those moods when I didn’t trust his judgment.

He arched up and pressed his neck into the razor. The skin around the blade whitened. “Do it.”

My lips parted despite myself and my fangs dropped. I dug in the knife edge into his skin. He hissed. A drop of blood appeared, and then another one, and a rivulet trickled down the long arch of his throat. I leaned in and licked it off his skin.

His body came to life beneath the touch of my tongue. A potent heave of his pulse, a rush of blood that oozed from the cut. It was barely a scratch, there would be no trace of it tomorrow. This was something only he and I would ever know about.

Athos was clinging to the edges of his chair with both hands. I saw the muscles in his arms bulge as they, too, pumped full with blood. Even without looking down, I knew where his blood pooled; the scent of his arousal was unmistakable.

“Hold on to me,” I told him as I lapped at his throat. He choked, I felt his Adam’s apple move under my mouth, and his hands wrapped themselves around my hips. Slowly, I moved between his legs, my fingers digging in his shoulders, my lips fastened to his neck, the razor forgotten on the table. Athos was so hard his prick was slapping against my stomach with every breath he took.

I pulled away abruptly. He gasped and opened his eyes, body snapping upwards. But I merely disrobed in one smooth motion and leaned back in.

“Aramis.” His voice was thick with arousal. “You’re beautiful.” He was gazing up at me and my breath caught at the expression in those dark eyes. He was staring up at me and I was staring back, and the world around us faded. His cock slid against mine, his knees pulled me in, and he turned his head, presenting his taut neck to me. I shook my head and I leaned in and kissed that mouth that I so loved, gasping when our lips met.

“No,” I muttered even as his tongue slid slickly over the seam of my lips. “The battle… I can’t take your blood before battle.”

“Please,” he mouthed with hot lips against my cheek. “Take it. I want you to. I want it to be my blood in your veins tomorrow.”

“Athos…” My resistance was dwindling fast. The power he had over me when he was giving himself over so fully. My head spun with desire, and he knew it. His hand trailed from my hip to my cock, strong fingers curled around my flesh and his. We both groaned, melting into each other, and he thrust up against me.

“ _Drink_ , Aramis.” My mouth on his neck, where his blood pulsated the strongest.

“You’re injured-” I ghosted my fingertips over the healing wound.

“Please take me.” His voice was no more than a vibration that reverberated through my flesh. “I’m yours. Show me. Show me I’m yours.”

Sprawled on the table before, beneath me. His legs around my hips, his hands, his arms clinging to me as if he were drowning, and his blood in my mouth: the blood of the covenant, a renewed promise of our bond. Its potency rendered me dizzy, in the same way that the up and down of the waves did when I was on board ship. Was that why he was feeding me? The sea battle was upon us. I would not remain on land when my fellow knights – when _Athos_ – fought at sea. He had the ocean in his blood, and he shared it with me to make me stronger.

There was such desperation to our mating that night. I had to let go of him to reach for the oil, and he seized my hand as if he feared that I would dissolve like Lysis in thin air if he lost his grip on me. His oiled hand moved around my cock, while I pressed my fingers into him. I trailed my mouth over the wound, not quite touching it, inhaling the flavour of his blood even through the thin layer of scarring skin. He was eerily quiet, hardly any sound escaped him but for his harsh breathing. I shoved my hips deeper between his spread thighs – and halted as a grimace flickered across his face.

“Did I hurt you?” He was so tight. Had I stretched him enough?

“Go on,” he urged me, pulling me in with his arms and legs.

“Not if it hurts,” I remained stubborn.

“Aramis-”

“Don’t make me hurt you.” I leaned over him, panting, imploring. “Not like this.”

He choked out a laugh. “I need…” He bit his lower lip. “Pain.”

“Good.” I kissed him, deeply, reaching across for the razor. “But not that kind of pain.” I pinned his wrist to the table and slashed open the vein in the crook of his elbow. The sting was sudden, sharp, and his body came off the table and slammed into mine. Blood gushed forth and I caught it with my tongue. “Hold tight to the edge,” I told him and sucked in a mouthful of blood. I kept the razor pressed into his flesh even as I was lapping at the open wound. Even as I thrust my other hand back between his legs, screwing my fingers into him, rubbing him until he was open and dripping oil, until my fingers were no longer enough and his body begged to be buggered. I slipped in easily now, a smooth slide into scorching heat. Athos curved up, taking me all in, fucking himself on me as I licked at the cut I had inflicted. Under the touches of my tongue, the wound was closing already. His cock was damp with arousal and perspiration that gathered between our bodies. “Do you want my hand?” I whispered, nuzzling his neck.

“ _Please._ ”

His release almost dislodged us both. So powerful was his body, so hard did it buck when he spent himself in my hand. The vice around my cock held me in place, clutching down so forcefully that for a moment I feared my prick would come off. Pain faded, lust rushed in, and my climax crushed me, pushed me into his body, into his embrace, into the heat and the scent that made me lightheaded. I lay atop him, our bodies glued together, and I felt him shudder as the muscles in his limbs, his stomach relaxed and loosened.

“I love you,” he said quietly into my hair.

_I know_ , I wanted to say. _I love you too._ Instead, I asked the question that had been nagging at me ever since last night.

“Are you scared?”

He stirred and his heart raced. “Why should I be scared?”

“I don’t know.” I propped myself up and kissed him. “It’s just a battle, Athos. It’s just war. It can’t hurt us.”

He kissed me back and I felt him smile. “True. You are very astute, little chyortik.”

I grinned bright. “I am sorry Grigoriy died.” I said, casting around in the dark. Melancholia, I knew, had him in her grip, and I didn’t know the reason for it. “But you said he’ll return to you, in a different guise. It can’t take long. And for now, Athos,” I kissed him again, relishing the way he relaxed more and more into my caresses, “I will take good care of you. I won’t ever let you go unshaved for such a long time.” I shuddered in disgust. “It made you look positively barbarian.”

***

When we were within reach of the Sultan’s flagship, we had released the grappling hooks. A cannonball whizzed right past my ear and smashed into our hull just as I swung onto the enemy’s deck. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aramis and Porthos follow suit on their own ropes.

Athos flew on board ship as if Poseidon himself had lifted him aloft in his waterfingers. Porthos heaved himself up with Herculean strength, aided by the experience of many years of pirating. All that I had at my disposal was my preternatural grace and that craving, that craving that drove me into the thickest, densest melee. Blood, rage and fear whirled through the air, tossed into my nostrils and lungs by Zephyrus' gentle hands.

I crashed into the middle of a melee, grabbing the first man before me and tossing him overboard without even liberating my sword from the scabbard. Porthos and I headed straight for the cannons, clearing our path and leaving blood in our wake. Aramis, sleek as a panther, scaled the main mast, intent on bringing it down with a battle ax. 

I didn't feel the slick boards heave beneath my feet. I didn't hear the roar of waves. My step was firm, my path was clear, and my mind lay becalmed like sea in moonlight, illumed by the beams of light that pulled me towards my prey. A man had fallen into my arms the moment my feet had alighted on deck, and his blood rushed through me like an avalanche. I had drunk his fear; I felt none myself. Scaling the mast was nothing: my body carried me to the top as if on wings.

Blood sprayed from the neck of the man who had been manning the last cannon, coloring me in crimson. His final cry was drowned by the sound of Porthos hurling the cannonballs through the boards upon which we stood. I heard them fall into the water below and realized we had breached the enemy's hull.

Beneath me, the thunderous roar of cannonballs and water. Poseidon and his minions were pulling Egyptians and Hospitallers to their watery graves. The waves no longer crested white: they were tinged pink as if under Aurora's kiss. The odour of blood and sea soared towards the skies, calling out to me. The mast felled, I glided down its length and my mouth latched onto the neck of a velvet-skinned youth, whose lifeforce prickled down my throat and through my veins.

I ran back onto the deck, shedding two more assailants off me simultaneously and sending them down into the bloodied waters below. Around us, I noticed the other ships being overrun by the Order’s forces. Several Egyptian galleys were on fire, their oars abandoned, their jibs hung in ashen defeat. 

The purging force of fire. Sails and beams aflame on ships around us, raining down on the men's heads and pulling them down to Hell. Amidst the advance guard of the Apocalypse, I heard the bellow of Porthos' laugh, and the giant rose from debris like phoenix from the ashes. My mind was clear, my path mapped out, the liturgy of death echoed through my soul. 

I scanned the deck for Aramis and found him quickly enough. The fire of battle was upon him. He moved so quickly that his would-be assailants had not the time to even call out to their One God prior to meeting a swift death. His mouth was colored with the blood not his own. For a moment, he spotted me and our eyes locked. He called out a warning and I ducked, a heavy mace swinging over my head. I slashed along my attacker’s shins, bringing him to the ground and then ran him through, kicking his body into the waters below to keep the deck clear for maneuvering.

The brightest beam was the one that guided me to him. I sensed his presence within the sea of bodies. "Athos!" He dodged, killed, survived. 

There weren’t very many soldiers left on the flagship, allowing us to regroup. Aramis moved closer to me and we stood back to back for a moment before springing forth against the rallying remaining forces of the Sultan. The ship was taking in water fast and the only way off the doomed boat would have been through us. I, for one, wasn’t planning on letting anyone go overboard alive.

This was the true Eucharist. Athos was right: the symbolic libations with watered-down wine and unleavened bread were but a mockery of the sacrament. Spilled blood and burning flesh, proffered on the altar of the One God. Fire raining down on Sodom and Gomorrha. The slaughter of the Midianites in His name and by His command. The One God had left His desert home to aid our arms amidst the crushing waves of the sea.

Porthos had used the severed mainmast to improvise a bridge between the sinking flagship and our own carrack. I saw his signal to abandon the enemy’s sinking ship, but my distraction cost me a blow to the shoulder. I staggered but rallied quickly enough to run my would-be assassin through. I threw him overboard as well and turned back towards Aramis. It must have been the scent of my blood that called him, because he turned to me, forgetting his own assailant. His eyes lit up with worry even as his foot landed into a puddle of freshly spilled blood and I watched him slip.

A flash of light that pierced my mind: Athos' blood. Potent and powerful even over the stench of blood of hundreds. Like liquor against watered-down wine. For the first time, my mind flickered and my hand faltered.

“Aramis!” I only had time to call out his name when before my very eyes, like a scene out of my worst nightmare, an Egyptian soldier swung and buried his dagger right in my lover’s skull. “No!” 

A stab of light, like a white-hot rod. And then - nothing.

I watched helplessly as light went out of Aramis’ eyes and his mouth slackened. And then, to complete my horror, the rabid Egyptian dog had kicked my beloved’s body overboard, right into the eternal watery grave that he had always so feared.

I did not think anymore, I did not need to. My mission was clear and I let go of my sword and tossed myself overboard after his body. The waters ran vermillion with infidel and Christian blood alike and I sank beneath the surface, swimming down, to the depths, as fast as my arms’ strokes would carry me. I had to find him and remove the knife. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed. Only the watery void beneath me and my lover’s salvation. Somewhere, down there, in the depth, I would find him like I always did.

Water could not kill me: I was not afraid of drowning or of being crushed by the increasing pressure. I was only terrified of not finding him, not getting to him in time. That fear beat against my temples, against my chest, in every fibre of my being like an ancient drum beat. _Find him, find him, find him._ At last, I saw him, his long hair cast about in the murky waters, his skin appearing to glow in the darkness surrounding us. I was at his side in a blink of an eye, pulling him against me, yanking that offending piece of weaponry out of his skull and tossing it to the bottom of the ocean where it could rot for all eternity for daring to take my flittermouse from me. 

A stab through my skull. Light poured in again. Liquid light like molten steel. Drip, drip, drip into my brain and my eyes.

His eyes remained closed. I knew I had better get him back to shore, but I felt frozen in place, holding him close, pressing my lips against his - so cold, so _dead_ \- as if by doing so I could give him the breath of life again.

I was blind. Light filled my skull like lava. 

_Open your eyes,_ I begged silently. _Please, Aramis, open your eyes._ I kissed him again, my own lungs filling up with water as I did so. It did not matter, I told myself. I did not need my lungs as long as Aramis was alive. As long as he opened his eyes. 

And then - a gleam. Faint like the first ray of the morning sun. Divine light. My salvation. _Athos_.

And then I felt him, a shudder ran through his limbs and, at last, his eyelids flew open. Slowly but surely, he was coming back to me. He was going to be fine. His extinguished orbs still looked out at me in a haze and he did not speak. I supposed it would take longer than this for the damage done to his brain to ameliorate, and I again reminded myself that I needed to get us both to shore. 

Did I see him? My eyes were blind. Yet his face floated before me, imprinted on my mind forever.

I pressed my lips to his but his eyes remained unfocused and unseeing. I grabbed on to his belt and kicked out my legs, to begin to propel us both back towards the surface when something tangled around my ankle. I tried to shake it off but the grip only tightened. I looked down, ruing the fact that I dropped my own sword upon the deck of the sinking ship and that I threw away the dagger that I had pulled out of Aramis’ head. That’s when I saw it, whatever it was. A terrible conglomeration of tentacles rising up from the depths towards me.

I pushed Aramis away, away from myself, away from the sea monster who was wrapping me up in his clutches and pulling me away. Thick tentacle after tentacle wrapped around me, binding my limbs, crushing my ribcage as it tightened its hold. I looked back to see Aramis floating away, like flotsam, wherever the current was taking him. 

I was adrift. The Sun went out. I drowned in darkness.

His eyes were still opened yet I never did learn if he could see me. But he was reborn again. Alive and free. And that’s all that mattered. Everything else… the lacerating pain as the sea monster tore me apart…. and the darkness that followed… it was all trifles.

END OF VOLUME I

**Author's Note:**

> The adventures will continue in [Volume II](http://archiveofourown.org/series/296354)


End file.
